As news years go, 2025 has been a doozy. Nationally, the Trump administration has made headlines nonstop — from the setup of DOGE in January to the recent controversy over the bombing of Venezuelan drug-runner boats.
Nevada — and Nevadans — have certainly felt the effects of these national events. First and foremost, on the affordability front.
Michael Lyle, with the Nevada Current, won a Nevada Press Association's first place this year for his coverage of Vegas' unhoused population. "We've covered [unhoused people], telling stories of not just of the people who are working and the nonprofits, but also of the people themselves," said April Corbin-Girnus, editor of the Nevada Current.
In a similar vein, KUNR's "Does Home Mean Nevada?" series, produced in conjunction with Nevada Public Radio, focused specifically on the state's housing woes, such as land shortages and insurance loss. "We're going to keep an eye on [housing] coming into the midterm elections," KUNR's managing editor Vicki Adame said. "I think that's going to be one of those big issues that people are going to weigh in determining who they decide to vote for."
There was also plenty of coverage of Las Vegas' tourism falloff, much of it coming out of the Las Vegas Weekly. That team's reporting, compiled in a feature package, "Does Vegas Need Fixing?" teases out potential solutions from 2025's troubling tourism data — visitor-ship was down month-over-month (as much as 12 percent in July) this year, compared to last year.
"I think the one thing we're already seeing is free parking, for example," said Shannon Miller, editor of Las Vegas Weekly. "These casinos are really trying to appeal to local visitors, trying to get them to come in, where maybe international visitation is down. I think that's something we'll be seeing more of and we'll be following [in 2026]."
Broadly, though, Miller said newsrooms like hers feel a sense of trepidation about what the year ahead holds.
"There's a lot of fear because the First Amendment is at risk," she said. "Locally here in Southern Nevada and across Nevada, I think we respond to that by not backing down and trusting our guts. When we feel like we're being silenced, that's the time to turn up the volume and and actually report the truth. And so I think that's kind of our reaction to the atmosphere right now."
Guests: Vicki Adame, managing editor, KUNR Public Radio; April Corbin-Girnus, deputy editor, Nevada Current; and Shannon Miller, editor, Las Vegas Weekly.
