On the current environment of attacks on freedom of expression nationally and here against our own endeavor

A recap of our recent reporting plus bonus content.

Mar 21, 2025

Above a telling photo of a recent downtown library protest with locals having diverging views gathering in the same space.

Despite this example, these are worrisome times for those who value freedom of expression.

An acclaimed French researcher was recently denied entry after US authorities apparently found messages on his phone about President Donald Trump. What is this country turning into?

Can you imagine the stress of UNR professors who aren’t citizens coming back from outside the country now? If such a high level person is being rejected, we can’t fathom the countless other similar ordeals not making headlines. When deportations aren’t carried out despite judicial orders to prevent them, others in closely followed cases find themselves in limbo.

Currently, an academic legally in Washington, D.C., finds himself under threat of deportation because of the suspected views of his wife, a U.S. citizen with Palestinian heritage. Meanwhile, the Columbia graduate and green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil is still being held in Louisiana by immigration agents, as his wife is about have a baby, due to leading previous campus protests against Israel.

In this environment, we’ve boosted our coverage of local progressive protests, as well as occasionally letting the community know which protests are coming up, because we believe this movement is important, and courageous protests are worthy of our attention.

Remember the German pastor who said this about the importance of speaking up: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

There’s been a flood of fascistic commentary on our posts of late, but we won’t let the hate mongers scare us. It’s not just from those corners of the internet that we face abuse though, but from prominent members of this community as well.

The well-known owner of an ad, pr and marketing agency recently called Our Town Reno a joke. She said it had been an embarrassment to the journalism school.

Our coordinator who is of French origin and works at the j-school had friended her on Facebook with others to get a gage on local chatter when first moving here. After being told about the post, he tried to defend this initiative which includes lots of stellar student reporting to no avail.

This particular Reynolds School of Journalism graduate has a long history of trying to strong arm local journalists into getting the coverage she wants, to promote her clients, but she must have quickly realized bulldozing would not work with Our Town Reno. She once tried to force a story upon us of a rehoused former motel resident who didn’t want to be interviewed about their actual life, which ended up putting both the student journalist and the subject of the interview in tears due to the awkwardness of the situation.

What prompted her latest post was a short news alert with a police report filed against councilman Devon Reese first published by Our Town Reno, accompanied by Reese’s emailed comment on the matter.

Onward came the flood of negative comments, from Reese himself, often dismissive of what we do, his allies and acolytes, failed candidates in his coterie, political operatives, those getting juicy local government contracts and curiously even from a media and communications manager at Washoe County, saying what we do isn’t “journalism”, as if all these non practitioners of this ever evolving craft are any types of gatekeepers.

The same media manager said that what we were doing wasn’t journalism when we correctly reported Kyle Rittenhouse was furnishing a local home and buying a vehicle here, several years ago, while the Black Lives Matter movement was near its height.

“Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations,” our coordinator noted quoting the great George Orwell in a defense that was belittled by this regular cast of keyboard clacking Reese cheerleaders.

During city council meetings, Reese has repeatedly tried to deride Alicia Barber’s Barber Brief as a “blog,” even though it has by far the most comprehensive presentation and look through of current city affairs.

Our Town Reno has always mixed micro information alerts coming directly from our readers, investigations into local abuses and peculiarities asked for by our readers, stories about those living without stable shelter, promotions of volunteers, do gooders, thought leaders and small business owners, ideas for progress, videos of protests and street photography. It’s been the same formula for 10 years, all locally oriented and all locally made.

We are purely volunteer run, with no budget, and just kind donations via our Substack.

Some of our detractors seem to have views of what media was in the second half of the 20th century, controlled by old white men, with elitist legacy media serving up objectivity as a status quo for the powerful, beefed up by advertisers, which they dared not confront. Get both sides of a story they say, but which two sides are they talking about, as if there aren’t a million sides to every story.

Along with the hateful fascists, pro growth at all cost types (saying they are saving the environment with just a few new trees) and always gentrifying middle of the road pr hacks, several northern Nevada subsets have long been opponents of what we do on this page.

Thankfully we do get messages of support, publicly and in private messages. “They are all bad news,” one reader wrote to us on our BiggestLittleStreets Instagram, which as we’ve noted now has more followers than other newspapers, news websites, tv stations and radio channels in Reno. Despite everyone saying they are now unfollowing us, we seem to be getting new followers daily. Curious how that works. “You are getting the reaction you are …. Cuz you hit the truth nerve,” the reader wrote. “Otherwise why would they care.”