Week of Dec. 31, 2025

From the publisher’s desk

Happy (almost) New Year! As we prepare for what promises to be a … fascinating 2026, here are some of the issues those of us at the RN&R will be emphasizing in our coverage.

• The continuing local effects of federal actions: A lot of our news stories in 2025 focused on the local consequences of the actions by the Trump administration—from the weakening of the safety net for underserved residents, to the threats to (and information vacuum surrounding) federal lands, to the effects on local public radio as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting wound down operations.

Alas, our federal government is a complete mess as 2026 arrives. The president clearly is not well. The resistance, if you can call it that, by Democrats in Congress has been ineffectual and pathetic. And, hey, we may be facing another government shutdown in 30 days.

So, yeah, this is something we’ll be watching a LOT in the new year. In a related vein …

• Election 2026: We are entering an election year, and it’s kinda important.

While we’re still determining what we can and can’t cover given our limited resources, we do know that we’ll focus on issues of importance to Northern Nevadans. What you will not find: horse-race-style coverage or reporting on inconsequential “wedge issues.”

• The ongoing housing crisis: When we made our 43-month return to print in 2022, our first three cover stories were on the area’s development growing pains, Nevada’s eviction laws (which are among the unfriendliest to tenants in the country) and sky-high rents.

In other words: They were all about housing.

While the local housing market has calmed somewhat, the average rent in Reno is north of $1,700—an amount that many area workers can’t afford, even if they’re working full-time. (Nevada’s minimum wage is $12.) And as for buying a house here: The median sales price for single-family homes is approaching $600,000.

This means a lot of locals are struggling to make ends meet—and this is a problem.

A continued emphasis on arts and culture: Throughout our 32-year-plus history, the RN&R has dedicated a plurality of our coverage to arts and culture—and that’s not changing in 2026.

Yeah, there’s a LOT of hard news that needs to be covered locally—but it’s culture that makes a place a community, and local events, theater, music, visual arts and food need to be covered, too. As the local news media have shriveled in recent years, culture coverage has taken a significant hit—and 2025 was particularly tough for local arts coverage, as RN&R managing editor Kris Vagner’s Double Scoop, a statewide arts-news nonprofit, ceased publication earlier this year.

While we ended our regular monthly print edition with our December 2025 issue, we plan on doing more arts and culture coverage than ever before in 2026—coverage you can find at RenoNR.com, and in our newsletters.

Have a great New Year’s Day!

—Jimmy Boegle, publisher/executive editor