Brian Burghart departs

RN&R editor/publisher Brian Burghart has resigned.

Burghart is the longest-tenured member of the newspaper staff. He began as calendar editor with the Nevada Weekly, the 1993-1995 forerunner of the Reno News & Review, evolving through several other titles before taking the top spot.

Under his editorship, the RN&R has regularly received the award from the Nevada Press Association for general excellence in its category.

Burghart’s investigation of Reno City Councilmember Sherrie Doyle’s campaign finances led to her prosecution and departure from the council.

Often noted for long-form pieces that were methodically assembled with thoroughness and depth, his cover stories on the Reno Convention and Visitors Authority, Reno Gazette Journal publisher Sue Clark, and the management practices that preceded the 1996-1997 flood were distinguished by that trademark style.

In 2014, he brought that technique to a new project—Fatal Encounters, a database of documentation and statistics about people killed by police that Burghart began as a graduate degree student and evolved into a permanent institution. When unrest followed the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014, Fatal Encounters came to widespread national attention. Burghart said he is now departing the RN&R to devote full time to Fatal Encounters.

Max Weber: “Not everyone realizes that to write a really good piece of journalism is at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar.”