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Tom Tait was a Las Vegas-based Associated Press news editor who hired reporters, mentored writers and guided coverage in Nevada and surrounding states from 2000 to 2022.
He retired in June 2022 as Southwest AP news editor for Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada after 45 years in journalism in California and Nevada.
The roster of reporters Tait managed speaks volumes. He joined a Nevada AP staff of names familiar to Nevada Press Association members, including three who are Hall of Fame members: Robert Macy, Tim Dahlberg and Brendan Riley. He also hired or guided dozens of gifted AP journalists, including Pulitzer Prize winners Adam Goldman and Hannah Dreier.
“I think a news editor can be measured by the quality of the report and the character of the people they enlist for the job,” said Ken Ritter, a longtime AP news reporter who worked with Tait for almost 25 years. “The roster of reporters Tom has managed speaks volumes.”
Tait edited the Spartan Daily at San Jose State University in the 1970s. He worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the Camarillo Daily News, the Daily Pilot in Costa Mesa and the Orange County Register before spending nine years managing and editing The Desert Sun, a Gannett newspaper. He became AP news editor in Las Vegas in February 2000.
Tait’s name wasn’t in the byline. But his imprint was everywhere in the AP report.
He oversaw coverage of elections; the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001; entertainer Roy Horn’s mauling in 2003 by a white tiger at The Mirage; the 2006 shooting death of a judge in Reno; the 2007 arrest of O.J. Simpson and his trial, conviction and release in Lovelock in October 2017 – the same day a gunman killed 58 people in the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history on the Las Vegas Strip.
There were corruption scandals, casino implosions and openings; the effects of the Great Recession of 2008; the Sagebrush rebellion and an armed standoff at the Bundy ranch; shootings of a judge in Reno in 2006 and at an iHOP restaurant in Carson City in 2011; the long political fight before the federal Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project was shelved; the rise and fall of water levels at Lake Mead; and the coronavirus pandemic and casino closures in 2020.
