In Good Hands Thanks to our Substack Donations

A recap of our recent reporting plus bonus content.

Jun 11, 2025

After running this initiative as a volunteer for 10 years now, with the BiggestLittleStreets Instagram especially picking up steam in recent months with important reader submitted content from there, our main coordinator will be going mostly off the grid over the next few weeks on another continent, to recharge.

Thanks to the generosity of our Substack subscribers, we will be able to pay two journalism students, Jules (left) and Genevy (right), to keep our Instagram and the Our Town Reno Facebook running, with new videos and the ongoing curation of contributions from citizen journalists from across northern Nevada, sending us photos and videos of what they find share worthy, interesting and concerning.

Yesterday was a prime example with readers sending us multiple videos and photos from several fires in different parts of our area as the early heat and dry conditions have us all on edge.

While the faraway retreat of our coordinator means a short hiatus of our investigative articles, other longer form reporting and this Substack, we will be resuming full operations in August, across our platforms, which also include an ourtownreno subreddit, where anyone is welcome to post directly, a Threads, a Bluesky and a TikTok, all under the Our Town Reno name.

You can keep messaging us on all those platforms as well as via our archive website here: https://www.ourtownreno.com/contact

Our initiative has always been at the intersection of crowdsourced journalism, solidarity news and informational social media, confounding some, many it seems feeling threatened in their unsavory positions, always ready to blast us, troll, or even harass and dox but hopefully illuminating, informing and entertaining many others.

It’s always been a place to amplify worthy locals and those often dismissed in mainstream and power circles while trying to shed a light on some of the dark corners of the Biggest Little City, always as a mirror to reader prompted alerts.

We’ve also always wanted to uplift and showcase the work of up and coming journalists, to encourage them to pursue this difficult but still crucial societal role.

For those in the community who have sent us donations as well as content to reshare, we are immensely grateful as this journey in hyperlocal media keeps unfolding into new directions always in the spirit of mutual aid.