The winners of the 2025 Nevada Press Foundation’s Awards of Excellence have been announced, and congratulations are in order all around! To our hardworking RN&R contributors, I say: Great work! I’m excited to see you recognized for jobs well done.
The RN&R competes in the Urban category, meaning we’re up against the state’s largest newspapers, like the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In the editorial department, Michael Moberly won first place in Food/Dining writing for his erudite, informative “Liquid Conversations” column. Veteran arts writer Jessica Santina won first place in Entertainment Feature Story for her moving theater story from last fall, “‘Still a story that needs to be told’: UNR students tackle the painful, prescient story of Matthew Shepard’s death and its aftereffects.” (I’m honored that my name is tagged onto that award for having penned the sidebar.) Publisher Jimmy Boegle’s thoughtful monthly dispatches earned first place for “Local Column”; I can’t think of a clearer, more consistent bird’s-eye view of what it’s like to be a local news publisher in this, an absurdly difficult era in which to be a local news publisher. And I won second place in Education Reporting for “An existential crisis for the ‘Sagebrush’: As media outlets struggle to reinvent a broken revenue model, UNR’s 131-year-old student newspaper is fighting to survive.”
The RN&R also took home three second-place and two third-place editorial awards for Special Sections, Education Writing, General Online Excellence and Editorial Page. In the advertising department, we earned first place for Advertising General Excellence, and second place for Special Section or Campaign.
Designer Dennis Wodzisz earned second place in Page One Design/Cover Design for his always-creative cover and cover-story designs, and the paper as a whole earned third place for Overall Design.
Well done, RN&R team!
And to our colleagues at news organizations large and small—The Nevada Independent, The Record-Courier, edible Reno Tahoe, This Is Reno, Lahontan Valley News and many others—kudos all around. Thank you for fighting the good fight, keeping truth in the limelight, and telling the stories of our communities.