Nevada Press Association The best in Nevada journalism since 1924
Kirk Kern knows a thing or two about moving on. Throughout his long newspaper career, he has never been without a job. But his position as chief operating officer at Battle Born Media and publisher of the company’s Mesquite Local News was eliminated in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced local businesses and casinos to shut down. With little-to-no advertising, Battle Born was forced to retrench.
“The owners closed the Mesquite Local News’ print edition, but they kept the website active,” Kern says (picture below left). “Eventually, they stopped adding content to the site.” 
Readers missed having a newspaper, and Kern missed his role as publisher. So in August 2020, he launched the Mesquite Monthly, which has made it well beyond its first year and is growing. He keeps his overhead low by doing it all himself.
“I came up through the editorial side, and I had owned a couple of magazines, so I knew I had the ability to do this as a one-man show,” he says.
Kern wasn’t alone in sensing opportunity in Mesquite, a town in Clark County with a population of 20,000, including many retirees and snowbirds who winter there from colder climates. Two other news providers entered the market in 2021 after Barb Ellestad shuttered the Mesquite Citizen Journal website, alleging the local police officers’ union threatened her and intimated her advertisers and sources. (Ellestad had reported on an investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior by Mesquite’s police chief, who later sued her for defamation. She has since filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit and is seeking $10,000 in compensation.)
Vernon Robison (picture on right) is one of the new players. As publisher of the Moapa Valley Progress, a weekly newspaper his uncle started in 1987, Robison nurtured and grew the business until he felt the time was right to expand its coverage area. He had been building a presence in Mesquite for the last few years and finally opened an office there in August, staffing it with reporters and ad salespeople. He also shortened the newspaper’s name to “The Progress,” to reflect its expansion into the Virgin River valley.
“We increased distribution and today about half of our readers are in Mesquite,” he says.
News of the changing media environment also reached Las Vegas, where David and Liz Bounsall, who have ties to Mesquite, also saw an opening and launched the Virgin River Times. Nick Yamashita now manages the daily operations. Yamashita owns a martial arts school in Moapa Valley and had been a freelance reporter for The Progress for three years before joining the Bounsall’s news organization.
The paper published 10 print editions before converting to an online-only product, according to Yamashita. “We hope to get it back in print by this summer,” he says.
The Times strives to be an honest broker of local events and to “inject a little positivity” into the news. “We want to present both sides of every issue and to make the business all about the community,” says Yamashita (picture below left). “Our goal is to shed a positive light on Mesquite and the whole area.”
In part, they hope to achieve that through stronger coverage of the senior community, school-age kids and local nonprofits, and by partnering with local community groups on projects that will help the news organization grow. For example, The Times just began working with a local high school to help produce video and podcasts focusing on local personalities.
Kern is also exploring options for growth.
With money in the bank and no outstanding bills, Kern considers the Mesquite Monthly an early success and he’s moving forward with other new ventures. He has received the green light from his former bosses at Battle Born to revive and publish daily online news under the Mesquite Local News flag.
“The Local News’ website was never shut down, and even when the owners stopped posting fresh news and stories, it continued to get good traffic,” Kern says. “It was having like 20,000 visitors a month, with no updated content.”
He finds having a daily presence online compliments the Mesquite Monthly print product.
Today, web traffic on the Local News website has more than tripled, and advertisers are starting to notice.
“It’s not where I’d like it to be in terms of ad sales and revenue, but it’s better than it was,” he says. “It’s working well as an online publication, and while the revenue is not robust, it is enough to cover costs.”
The Mesquite Monthly is a 28-page printed tabloid newspaper. Occasionally, Kern publishes special editions and hopes to increase the newspaper’s frequency in the future.
The free newspaper is distributed at about 50 locations around town, and readers love it. He has no plans to sell subscriptions and prefers that out-of-towners read it online.
“My pickup rate is close to 100 percent,” he says, and added that he’s not surprised by the Mesquite Monthly’s success.
“Newspapers are important in really small towns where there’s no other way for residents to get news,” he says.
Robison says his expansion 35 miles up I-15 hasn’t been without its challenges. “It requires a delicate balancing act for one local newspaper to provide equal coverage and satisfy readers in two different areas,” he explains. “We thought about publishing a separate paper in Mesquite, but we believe the two communities we cover have more in common than differences.”
Robison would like to convert the newspaper from free distribution to paid subscriptions. But he views it as an uphill battle he’s not willing to fight. After all, free distribution is part of the newspaper’s legacy. It’s an expensive legacy.
“When my uncle started The Progress, he mailed newspapers to every household for free, and at the time that was a great thing,” he says. “Today, it’s almost impossible to change. Once you’ve given readers something for free delivered right to their door, they expect to see it in their mailbox every week.”
In Mesquite, it’s different. There, he has installed news racks all over town, where customers can easily pick their papers up each week.
Total distribution is currently 6,200. The Progress is published on Mondays and is mailed to all 3,100 home addresses in Overton, Logandale and Moapa. An additional 3,100 copies are distributed to 45 free newsstands in Mesquite and in the neighboring township of Bunkerville.
Robison maintains a good relationship with his colleagues who have started news publications in Mesquite, and believes together, they can serve their community well.
“I think there’s room for all of us,” he says. “People like to see what the different news outlets have to say about things.”
As Yamashita sees it, the Virgin River Times, The Mesquite Monthly and MesquiteLocalNews.com, and The Progress, are all creating a winning situation for their community, and readers are benefiting.
“I’ve worked with Vern for years and he has been such an inspiration for me,” Yamashita says. “I look forward to working together with all the other publications to benefit a community we love.”