In 2013, I took a buyout after 25 years as a reporter and editor on the Reno Gazette-Journal. I received a name from Reno Mayor Bob Cashell, a Texas transplant who grew to become one in all Nevada’s favourite sons.
“You’re too younger to be nailing the previous coonskin to the wall,” Bob drawled. I informed him I’d nonetheless be working—writing books, educating and performing in Chautauqua. I’d made a dwelling telling tales for many years, I famous, and I wouldn’t cease spinning yarns. However I’d sworn off full-time jobs ceaselessly, particularly one listed on the high of a newspaper’s masthead.
Seven years later, COVID-19 disrupted everybody’s lives, finally killed 1.1 million Individuals (and counting) and erased numerous companies. The Reno Information & Assessment shut down in March 2020. I used to be employed weeks later to maintain the RN&R alive on-line “for about three months” till the pandemic ended.
Through the first 12 months, I felt like a lone defender on the partitions of the Alamo. (Cashell, who died in 2020, would have appreciated the simile.) The job was each a burden and a blessing. Because the nation was roiled by contagion, financial woes, poisonous politics and civil strife, I used to be again in my ingredient, reporting from the streets, not trapped at dwelling as information broke out throughout.
When former editor Jimmy Boegle purchased the paper final 12 months, I stayed on as editor/reporter to assist shepherd it again into print. I all the time deliberate to return to tasks I’d placed on maintain—and now I’m.
That is my final concern as managing editor. Veteran Reno journalist Kris Vagner will take the conn.
I’ll stay a contributor, so I’ll nonetheless see you within the humorous papers. It has been an honor, a privilege and an surprising final hurrah to be on the helm of the RN&R these previous 40 months.
And now my watch is ended.