KUNR Public Radio has joined the Mountain West News Bureau, a regional reporting collaboration of public radio news stations. KUNR, a service of the University of Nevada, Reno, joins five current member stations in serving the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah—and now Nevada’s high desert and the Sierra.

The Mountain West News Bureau provides original reporting from its combined network of public radio newsrooms led by Boise State Public Radio in Idaho and including KUNR (Reno), KUER (Salt Lake City), Wyoming Public Media (Laramie), KRCC (Colorado Springs) and KUNC (Greeley, Colorado). Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the station partners.

“Collaboration is a force multiplier; together, stations can do more and innovate faster to provide the local journalism that is part of the bedrock of public media’s valued service to our country," said Kathy Merritt, CPB senior vice president, journalism and radio.

“The growth of the KUNR newsroom over the past several years is impressive,” said Tom Michael, general manager of Boise State Public Radio and managing director of the Mountain West News Bureau. “We are proud to include KUNR in the collaboration. We look forward to sharing regional reports for the listeners in Reno and to hear more stories from Nevada.”

Western Issues Include Land, Water, Growth, Culture

Each partner station has a dedicated reporter who contributes stories about the unique issues in the urban and rural areas of the Rocky Mountain/Sierra Nevada region. They also collaborate with national programs, including American Public Media’s Marketplace, NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as other public media programs. The four main areas of editorial focus are:

• Land and water resource management
• Regional growth
• Issues in the rural West
• Western culture

The stations work together to highlight these issues for a broad range of listeners. As in other regional journalism collaborations across the country, the project’s journalists are based in station newsrooms, sharing news content for audio and digital platforms across the region.

“From the Sierra to the Rocky Mountains and throughout the surrounding areas, we share common Western concerns and region-specific issues,” said KUNR general manager David Stipech. “KUNR is excited to contribute to the news bureau’s tradition of sharing relevant, relatable stories with regional and national audiences—the way public radio does so well.”

Since its inception in early 2018, the Mountain West News Bureau has produced more than 700 stories or news reports for regional or national distribution, several of which have been recognized with prestigious industry awards.

KUNR is an award-winning NPR-member station with a growing presence in providing local and regional news to 70,000 weekly listeners throughout Northern Nevada, Eastern Nevada and the Eastern Sierra. Licensed to the Nevada System of Higher Education, KUNR has for more than 55 years broadcast from the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno, a land grant institution and top tier research university with an enrollment of nearly 22,000. KUNR is part of the university's Reynolds School of Journalism, one of 110 fully-accredited journalism and mass communication programs in the United States.