It’s been a while since we distributed regular newsprint copies, and getting our Best of Northern Nevada issue together sent me straight down Memory Lane.
I still remember the first time I saw an alt-weekly. It was in 1990—a year before I got my first email account or ever saw a webpage. Social media wouldn’t be available to ordinary users for almost two decades. Mark Zuckerberg was only 6. People—even young people!—did not yet consider newspapers old-fashioned.
I was an 18-year-old college student in Tempe, Ariz., working at a busy coffeehouse on the town’s main drag and having my mind blown on a regular basis by things that did not exist in the small New England town where I grew up. Arizona State University’s buzzing theater scene! Downtown Phoenix’s weird warehouse music scene! Activism! Cold brew! Counterculture! And the Phoenix New Times.
That newspaper was a portal to worlds I’d never known I wanted to be part of. For the first time in my life, I had a steady stream of news about progressive politics, marginalized community members and corporate wrongdoing, along with serious but accessible discussions on local arts, and lifestyle reporting that was more gritty and honest than precious.
A lot has changed in the news industry since then. While some alt-weeklies continue to thrive, others have closed or been bought by large news corporations, and others are in the midst of a long period of experimentation, trying out various strategies to revive and reinvent now-outdated revenue models that pretty much died with the rise of online news and advertising.
Small news organizations learned to shapeshift. Of the independent alternative newsweeklies that didn’t close or get bought out, some morphed into monthly print publications, or online-only news sources. The RN&R has taken on all of those forms. We launched as a print weekly in 1993, almost shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, went back into print on a monthly basis in 2022, and pivoted to a new form—mostly online, with a quarterly print edition (three of those quarterlies are glossy magazines for subscribers)—this year. (For more on what the RN&R’s been doing since December 2025, when we last distributed a newsprint issue, see Jimmy Boegle’s September column.)
Why do we persist? Do we love being dinosaurs? OK, I did laugh when I read Frank Mullen’s takedown of Gen-Z milkshake flavors. (See our Best of Northern Nevada staff picks!) I still cannot for the life of me get my head around all that is matcha. So, if you want to call me a dinosaur in that respect, that’s fair. But otherwise, no.
We persist because of our mission—to bring you a steady stream of news about progressive politics, marginalized community members and corporate wrongdoing, along with serious but accessible discussions on local arts, and lifestyle reporting that is more gritty and honest than precious. It is still as important to me as it was when the alt-weekly spirit first enticed me as a teenager.
So, I’m pretty excited about our fall issue. For one, you can still pick it up in a coffeehouse. (And wow—I am impressed by the number of locals who’ve told us this year that they still wanted to pick up print copies.) Plus, we’ve got some of the usual independent-news angles—read on to learn about how data centers and surveillance cameras are affecting life in our region—along with art, music and literature news you won’t get elsewhere.
Plus, it is our big, annual Best of Northern Nevada issue, where, as always, you’ll find out which people, places and things our readers deemed the best in the region. We’re proud to publish some lovely artwork by recent University of Nevada, Reno, graduate Kaija MacKinnon throughout the Best Of section. And, in addition to Frank’s advice on where to get good-ol’ chocolate milkshakes, we present plenty more opinionated takes from our staff and freelance writers about where to eat and shop, and how to soak up local culture like an expert.
Enjoy!