Nevada Press Association The best in Nevada journalism since 1924
This is the next in a series of profiles about news organizations that have been admitted into the Nevada Press Association since non-newspapers were granted full membership in 2019.
The Sierra Nevada Ally isn’t trying to be all things to all people.
Instead, its founders are working to make it the most important source for news on specific issues they believe are crucial to the region, starting with the environment.
“We are really serious about how we approach the content. We consider ourselves a regional nonprofit news organization with an environmental focus,” said Brian Bahouth, editor of Sierra Nevada Ally who brings 25 years of news experience to the project, including public radio in Nevada, California and Colorado.
The name of the site expresses its mission, which is “to be a unifying force meant to instill empathy and help lay the groundwork for meaningful change,” according to the site.
Bahouth chuckles when asked about the inspiration for the Ally name. “We talked more about that name than perhaps any other aspect of the operation,” he said. “It really fits the mission. We didn’t just want to pick up a Gazette or a Tribune. We don’t want to be ‘kind of like’ anyone.”
It also fits into the 501(c)3 nonprofit organization of the effort, with Bahouth and Joe McCarthy serving as the guiding lights while content flows from 45-some contributors and one almost-full-time reporter, Scott King.
The seeds of the Ally grew from an initiative by Bahouth and McCarthy, former community development director for Carson City who also writes and edits for the Ally, to create a community radio station, KNVC, in western Nevada.
From that came coverage of the 2019 Nevada legislative session for a site they called Nevada Capital News. Both outlets fall under the umbrella of the End of the Trail Broadcast Project, begun in 2017.
The Ally itself has been around since early 2020, making it about the same age as the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s one of only three news organizations in Nevada operating as members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. (The others are the Nevada Independent and Nevada Public Radio.)
Bahouth said the Ally is running on an annual budget of $100,000, and its freelance journalists are paid — although he and McCarthy are taking no salary. It solicits donations on the site, and people can specify that a contribution goes directly to freelance reporting. Headquarters is in the Innevation Center in Reno. Go Solar has been a corporate sponsor for more than a year.
Its regional coverage extends from Northern Nevada into California, Oregon and Idaho. In addition to the environment, the focus is on culture, cannabis and opinion.
“This is a critical environmental region. We look at this and say, this is related ecologically, economically, socially, culturally,” explained Bahouth. Readership about those issues is especially strong from Las Vegas, San Francisco and Sacramento, he said.
“We decided these are our sections. We’re going to bust ass on them and own them. Our reporting is as good as anyone” in the Ally’s strategic content areas, he said. “We work to lead. We have to think this way.”
In keeping with its name, the Ally joined the Nevada Press Association last year as a unified lobby on issues affecting the news media, especially at the Legislature. “I think it’s really important that the Ally be part of it,” said Bahouth.