It takes a village

I’m trying to train myself to change my language. When people ask me how I am, I want to reply, “Generally excellent.”

You see, the RN&R won the 2003 Nevada Press Association’s top annual award. It’s called, “General Excellence,” and in our class, we were up against larger and wealthier alternative newspapers like Las Vegas CityLife, Las Vegas Mercury and the Las Vegas Weekly.

Now, I’d like to say I feel bad about bragging on our award, but like the superlative declaration, “Generally excellent,” sometimes I don’t mean everything I say, and sometimes I don’t say everything I’m thinking. Be that as it may, I think it’s pretty damned cool that we won this honor. The coolest thing about it is, it’s not just for the editorial team, it’s for the whole package we call the Reno News & Review.

There are things about our paper that I think are very good, but there are just as many that I think need some work. I can feel which way the wind is blowing, and I think we’re going to need a larger news section. I think some of our culture coverage could be more critical and alliterative. All I really want, though, is more—more stories, more pages, more cartoons, more reviews, more stuff.

And we’re going to get more. Due to the efforts of people like—take a deep breath—our General Manager John Murphy, News Editor Deidre Pike, Arts Editor Miranda Jesch, Calendar Editor Kelley Lang, Photo Editor David Robert, Art Director David Jayne Account Executives Bob Grimm, Victoria Stafford, Trish Walker, Ina Wilson, Office Manager Catherine Greenspan, Senior Editor Bob Speer, Chief Operations Officer Deborah Redmond and President Jeff vonKaenel and all those contributors and support people in the organization, we are going to grow and continue to bring you a generally excellent newspaper. And someday, I hope to be here to tell you we’ve brought you a specifically excellent newspaper.