Week of Nov. 26, 2025

From the editor’s desk

Normally, the RN&R doesn’t do a lot of speculating. In our news stories, we usually report on what has already happened. But since the December issue is our last regular print issue, we did something a little different to mark the occasion: We looked to the future. RN&R writers predicted what certain aspects of Reno will look like 10 years from now, in 2035.

Since we’re looking forward a decade, I decided to look back a decade, too. In the Nov. 19, 2015, issue, we published some future predictions of a different sort. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris was about to take place, and the cover story was “Letters to the future.” Melinda Walsh, former editor of the Sacramento News & Review, spearheaded a project in which well-known authors, scientists and others predicted the outcome of the climate talks in letters to their descendants. The Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the Media Consortium were part of the project, too, and dozens of alt-weeklies and other news outlets published selections from the letters, the RN&R among them. 

Astronaut Stephen K. Robinson recounted how fragile the earth’s atmosphere looked when he first saw it from space … 

What you see is the most exquisite, luminous, delicate glow of a layered azure haze holding the Earth like an ethereal eggshell.

.. and expressed hope that we would protect it.

Harry Reid, the late U.S. Senator from Nevada, wrote about climate damage (and remember, he’s speaking from the future here, before the Paris talks and before the year’s end):

At the close of 2015, the world finally did something about it. Everybody knew we needed to address climate change and that a failure to lead could destroy the progress we fought so hard to achieve and endanger your future. In the face of this reality, the United States pressed on and led a historic global agreement to change the course of climate change worldwide.

A “failure to lead,” however, did, in fact, ensue. 

The U.S. joined the Paris Climate Accord in 2016. In 2017, President Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the agreement in 2020, which it did. On Joe Biden’s first day as president in 2021, the U.S. rejoined the accord. Then, once Trump was back in office, the U.S. again withdrew from the accord, per the Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements order. 

A few nations never joined—Iran, Libya and Yemen—and we are the only nation to have withdrawn.

Even though we really don’t know what is in store for the next decade, we had fun taking a stab at it, and I hope you enjoy the December cover package. If you have your own predictions for the Reno of 2035, send them over! You can reach me at krisv@renonr.com.

One thing I’ll really miss about the print issue is the way that all of our page designers over the years brought so much talent and creativity to the table, and kept that cool, magazine-layout look alive long past the heyday of actual magazines. That’s always been a part of the alternative newspaper aesthetic, and I’ve always really liked it. Huge thanks to the RN&R’s designer since 2022, Dennis Wodzisz, for all of the great print designs! If you ever want to browse through the many fantastic cover designs that he and others have created over the years, they’re here on our Issuu page.

I wish you a bright, safe future and a happy Thanksgiving weekend.

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor