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After 47 years, the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza in Incline Village will publish its last stand-alone edition this week, part of a restructuring that will effect four Swift Communications newspapers in northern Nevada and California.
Here’s Publisher Ben Rogers’s note on the changes.
In essence, the Tahoe Daily Tribune, based in South Lake Tahoe, will start serving Incline Village at the opposite end of the lake. The Sierra Sun in Truckee will be renamed, and its operations are moving to Grass Valley.
Here’s the story about the changes in the Grass Valley Union.
The Bonanza was founded in 1970 and has been a frequent award winner in the Nevada Press Association’s annual Better Newspaper Contest over the years. Owned by Carson City-based Swift Communications, it operated as part of the Sierra Nevada Media Group that also includes the Nevada Appeal, The Record-Courier in Minden-Gardnerville, the Lahontan Valley News in Fallon and Northern Nevada Business Weekly in Reno.
Its name, of course, harkens not only to the gold- and silver-mining heyday of Nevada but also the long-running television series (1959-1973) that used the scenery of Lake Tahoe as a backdrop for the Ponderosa Ranch.
As you can see in the screenshot at top, the Bonanza already had been sharing a web page with the Sierra Sun.
The demise of the Bonanza flag marks the latest example of reshuffling of nameplates for Nevada newspapers, who have combined, renamed and reconfigured over the decades.
Just last month, at the same time the Las Vegas Sun announced it would start charging for some news on its web site, it also combined its free weekly newspaper, The Sunday, with its entertainment publication, Las Vegas Weekly. The Sunday had been around for about four years.
Other examples: the Fernley Leader and Dayton Courier are now both inside the Mason Valley News. More recently, the Comstock Chronicle and Virginia City News have combined, and the newly established Dayton Valley Dispatch is a part of that newspaper too.
Going back quite a bit farther, that’s how the Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle Standard got its full name, and similarly the Tonopah Times-Bonanza and Goldfield News.
During the past decade, both the Fallon Star Press and the Henderson Press have started and departed. The Henderson Home News and Boulder City News disappeared, although the latter was replaced by the Boulder City Review.