By Peter Bernhard President & Publisher
Saturday, February 5, 2022
In an era of difficult times, I write to you today about another challenge put in front of us at the Nevada News Group.
Last fall you may have learned about the sale of Swift Communications’ newspapers to Ogden Newspapers. In addition to Swift’s newspapers in premier resort communities, Swift also sold their commercial printing press in Carson City.
As most newspapers readers know the print publication industry has been contracting for years. Smaller press runs, fewer pages, less color, and many publications have closed.
Now, unfortunately, the press in Carson City is too large and too expensive to operate in Northern Nevada. Ogden Newspapers has decided to close Press Works Ink, the company that did the printing for all our publications and others around Northern Nevada.
None of our publications are closing or changing in any material way but we want you to be aware of what is happening and why.
The Nevada News Group publishes six community newspapers — Nevada Appeal, The Record-Courier, The Lahontan Valley News, Humboldt Sun, Lovelock Review-Miner, and Battle Mountain Bugle — along with the Northern Nevada Business Weekly, and a monthly ranching magazine, Nevada Rancher.
Finding a new printer who can take on this amount of printing on a weekly basis has been difficult and presented us with an entire new set of challenges we haven’t faced before. Starting Feb. 14, we will be printing all of our publications at Wesco Graphics in Tracy, Calif., and having them trucked here.
As a result we have had to adjust deadlines and change publication dates for some of our newspapers. Of note The Record-Courier will change its midweek edition to Wednesday. The Lahontan Valley News will also be mailed, arriving on Thursdays.
Some readers in Lovelock, Winnemucca and Battle Mountain may get their newspaper a day later than they do now.
Weather is always an issue for newspaper delivery operations. Whether we are printing in Carson or Tracy a good snowstorm or power outage due to high winds or fire can affect the delivery time of our publications.
Obviously, coming over the mountains, this will be more of an issue and require greater attention on our part. We hope this won’t happen often, but if it does we ask your forgiveness.
At the same time most of the news from all of our publications can be read online. If bad weather affects our ability to get you the paper at the normal delivery time you can access your local news on one of our websites. You should be aware that some of the news in your printed newspaper does not appear online, and some of the news on our websites does not appear in your newspaper.
This gives us the ability to continue publishing news one way or the other so those parts of our business will not be affected, even if delivery is affected.
So often this kind of news makes some readers think their local newspaper is closing.
I just want to reiterate that is not the case.
We continue to have great support for our publications, and thank you for your interest in local news.
Questions and or comments can be directed to feedback@nevadanewsgroup.com.
