“Stunningly, more than 1,000 counties — one out of three — do not have the equivalent of even one full-time local journalist. And the ‘better of’ parts of the country are in lousy shape, too. About two-thirds of the counties — home to 217 million people — are below even that already-catastrophic national average of 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents…The crisis is more severe and widespread than previously thought.”

— New study from Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News

Ordinarily, this quantification of a known and disastrous problem would depress me, especially because Nevada is ranked dead last among the states (4.8 Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 population) But I have no time for handwringing or sulking.

Even if we can’t solve this terrible conundrum, we have to strive every day to ameliorate it. At The Indy, we have been committed and are rededicating ourselves to being a beacon of hope amid the gathering darkness.

The precipitous dwindling of the number of journalists in the U.S. and the concomitant gutting of news organizations have been happening for years. But this study brings into stark relief just how widespread it is, from coast to coast and from rural communities to big cities. As you can see from the map, news deserts exist in Nevada outside of Las Vegas and Reno. But the number of journalists in Clark County is 4.2 per 100,000 people, which is scarily low. In Reno, that number is even lower at 3.1, and some of the smaller counties have numbers less than 1. You can see the methodology and the specific county-by-county tallies here.

When we started The Indy eight and a half years ago, we were the little engine that could, chugging along with only four reporters and eight total employees and hoping to cover the Legislature with our small but mighty team. In less than a decade, we have nearly tripled those numbers — becoming the only statewide news organization and the only non-broadcast organization covering Carson City in-person every day during the session.

I am inspired every day by a team that has embraced our mission to provide deeply reported and contextualized stories on issues important to Nevadans. We are the go-to source for news about government, issues and politics in this state, and it is a tribute to this dedicated staff — including two newsroom leaders who were among those original reporters — that we continue to evolve and adapt.

We know what we are — we give our reporters time and don’t worry about every turn of the screw, breathlessly reporting without perspective. We emphasize giving our readers a better understanding of a chaotic world by diving deeply into stories, not fretting if we miss the latest food fight among politicians that gets clicks.

I believed when we started The Indy that there was a yearning for this type of journalism, that there were people inside the ideological outer edges that wanted coverage they could trust, that enlightened rather than inflamed. It has not been easy —– this is, as I have said many times, the hardest yet most exhilarating job I have had in 40 years in the business. But to watch these journalists rise to the challenge, many of them younger than I was when I started and even more passionate and hard-working, makes it all worthwhile.

None of this is free. We are in better financial shape than many nonprofit journalism enterprises, but we are not sustainable yet. We believe, though, that we must expand our horizons and look to deepen our coverage, starting at the local level.

We recently hired a Southern Nevada government accountability reporter to cover places most outlets cannot afford to track regularly. It’s a relatively small step, but one that, I hope, is just the beginning of broadening our mandate to hold power to account, to be the watchdog for the public.

Alas, the largest impediment to making this better is that the people who can help us — readers, viewers — have grown increasingly skeptical or even resistant to believing in our work. This is so insidious and we all must take responsibility, even if the problem has been exacerbated by a minority of bad actors and unfortunate scandals and amplified by those who want to discredit the media for their own self-serving ends.

It is our job to make the case for why this problem, which may seem irrelevant to your life, will eventually affect you. If we don’t know, you don’t know — what government is doing, what politicians are doing, what powerful forces are doing. We want to cover the good, the bad and the ugly because that is what keeps communities vibrant, what makes democracy flourish.

That’s why even competing news organizations must work together, as we do with rural newspapers, VegasPBS and KUNR. There truly is strength in numbers, and we have a stake in other news organizations remaining alive, too.

There is a lot of good work being done in Nevada. Even ideological or openly partisan news organizations are producing important stories — we should credit each other, not ignore each other.

What everyone in our business must do, as I repeat to myself every day, is ignore the trolls on social media and in real life, and refrain from the plague of whataboutism that distracts from the present by resurrecting the past. Yes, we're human, and we've made mistakes — some of which have understandably made otherwise reasonable people angry. We'll always try to explain why we made a certain choice, and ask you to judge us not on a single mistake but on the body of our work.

We couldn’t have done what we have since 2017 by ourselves. Without thousands upon thousands of donors and national groups formed to help solve this problem, we would not be here today. Those include the American Journalism Project, Emerson Collective and Arnold Ventures. And local philanthropists have boosted us immensely, too, including The Engelstad Foundation and the E.L. Cord Foundation.

As AJP’s CEO Sarabeth Berman put it after the Muck Rack/Rebuild Local News study came out: “These kinds of data points underscore a core challenge the American Journalism Project is working to address: ensuring that all communities, regardless of size or geography, have access to the resources and information they need.”

It takes a village to keep journalism alive and thriving, and we cannot survive in the long run without broad support. I have never been more dedicated to this cause, to making The Indy sustainable over the long run.

We can’t do it without you. Give us story tips. Tell us what we are missing or doing wrong. But most of all: Support our nonprofit journalism with whatever you can afford. If all of our readers could give us just $5 a month, we would be well on our way. (You can also give more ...)

After all, since we started, one part of the mission has not changed:

Your State. Your News. Your Voice.