This Is Reno: Growing into full-fledged news operation

By Nevada Press Association

This Is Reno is perhaps as good an example as any of how news organizations are created and evolve in the 21st century.

When Bob Conrad launched the online news site in 2009 with an irreverent interview with Lt. Dangle of the Comedy Central TV show Reno-911, he saw a need to write about local issues and offer points of view he wasn’t seeing anywhere else.

“Frankly, I didn’t intend it to be what it has become,” he recalled. “It was more just a way to get news out there that wasn’t being covered. We just set it up to put our PR stuff up and opinion columns. Since that time, it’s become more of a full-fledged news operation.”

As traditional newsrooms kept shrinking, This Is Reno has grown to involve a team of a dozen freelance writers and photographers. It has partnered with established media such as KUNR public radio in Reno and won recognition including a 2021 Edward R. Murrow Award with KUNR for excellence in diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s also one of the newer members of the Nevada Press Association.

“It’s more successful than I ever anticipated it being,” said Conrad, whose doctoral thesis at the University of Reno, Nevada was on social media, journalism and crisis communication. Although most of the team is freelance or part-time, he’s been able to bring on a full-time editor/reporter and hopes to keep growing.

Over the years, This Is Reno has gone from asking for donations to a membership model to a pay-per-article platform. Now it has moved to the subscription-based Pico system, which offers readers five free articles a month. It’s made the site sustainable, according to Conrad, and readership continues to rise.

The key attribute for This Is Reno is its emphasis on local stories.“The thing I always say to folks is, if you go to other Reno-based news sites, you see a lot of non-Reno news. Our biggest niche is that we are strictly focused on Reno, although in the last year we have gone to a lot more regional and statewide coverage.”

One example is coverage of the Legislature’s 2021 session by Jeri Chadwell, former news editor for the Reno News & Review who is now This Is Reno’s lead reporter and city editor.

Fresh from covering a homelessness protest, Conrad, who is editor/publisher/co-founder, said he would like to increase staffing but appreciates that his crew remains “nimble” and can continue to report on news that’s not getting much attention elsewhere.

He cites stories on yearlong disputes between Reno’s city bus drivers and the company that employs them, Keolis Transit, over issues such as mask mandates on the buses. “To me that’s a fascinating story with pretty big implications for people who rely on public transportation, and nobody’s really covered it like we have.”

Since the Nevada Press Association opened membership to online-only news sites and eased its emphasis on printed publications, This Is Reno joined the association to help strengthen the journalistic community in Nevada. Growth in the industry, he noted, is more likely to come online than in print.

To that point, what’s true for This Is Reno could also be applied to the association and to the news business in general.
“I think at the end of the day, whether or not we’re growing is our indicator of success,” said Conrad.