Longtime alt-weekly Sacramento News & Review transferring website to Sac Observer
Nearly 30 years ago, Rachel Leibrock approached her editor at Sacramento News & Review with an idea that wouldn’t have been approved at a more traditional publication.
The idea, which she pitched to her editor at Sacramento’s free alternative weekly newspaper in 1996: Leibrock, then 26, would go undercover as a C.K. McClatchy High School student.
Leibrock came up with a fake name and worked with an SN&R designer to forge a transcript from a different school. Then she went to the McClatchy office with longtime SN&R publisher Jeff vonKaenel, who posed as her uncle so she could enroll.
She spent three weeks as a McClatchy student that fall, producing an SN&R cover story. Now an American River College journalism professor and a freelance journalist, Leibrock said she wouldn’t do the assignment today or be comfortable assigning it as an editor. “It was just definitely a different world,” she said.
In its heyday, SN&R offered a variety of engaging stories that could entertain or push for change. In 2020, it suspended print publication because of the COVID pandemic before shifting to a monthly schedule. Its last print edition arrived on newsstands on Dec. 10, 2020.
Since then, publication has been web-only. It currently has no employees, largely relying on freelance and republished content from outlets such as CalMatters and KFF Health News.
Now SN&R’s website is being transferred to Sacramento’s Black newspaper, The Observer at no cost. The Observer’s president and publisher, Larry Lee will supervise the new operation.
Why SN&R is changing hands
SN&R’s roots date to 1977, when the Chico News & Review was founded. It began as a student publication at Chico State before going off-campus that year. SN&R was launched in 1989. Reno News & Review debuted in 1995.
The Observer is taking control of SN&R and Chico News & Review, which has been web-only since 2024. Reno News & Review wasn’t part of the transaction, as it was acquired in 2022 by a different company.
At its best, SN&R offered a mix of longform features, cultural coverage and watchdog journalism that could be found in coffee shops, restaurants and other venues throughout the region.
“I enjoyed having 80,000 circulation,” said vonKaenel, 75. “But I also enjoyed having the body of a 25-year-old.”
“Things change,” he added.
Over the years, SN&R’s circulation and profitability shrank. The rise of the internet took a toll on SN&R’s advertising model that over the years included local events, cannabis and the ever-popular “spicy personals.”
In a June 18 post to SN&R’s website, vonKaenel, along with two other founders of SN&R, Tina Flynn and vonKaenel’s wife, Deborah Redmond, announced a partnership with The Observer and a new website for SN&R. The post acknowledged the changes to SN&R’s ad revenue.
“Google and Facebook transformed the advertising business, capturing much of the revenue that once supported local news organizations,” the post noted.
Craig Aaron, co-CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Free Press, which advocates for free and open media, has seen the challenges alt-weeklies have faced. “There’s still great journalism being produced by a lot of alt-weeklies, but the business has just gotten so much harder,” Aaron said.
Age undoubtedly played a role in SN&R’s transition, as the June 18 post indicated.
“We are now in our seventies,” the piece noted. “If the mission of the Sacramento News & Review is going to continue beyond us, we need a succession plan that protects the journalism and positions it for the future.”
SN&R and The Observer have worked together in recent years along with other local outlets on Solving Sacramento, a journalistic collective.
The plan, at least for the immediate future, is for vonKaenel and Redmond to remain involved with SN&R. “Deborah and I are still going to be running the website under Larry’s auspices,” vonKaenel said. “This is enabling us to dramatically reduce the cost of running the business.”
Redmond and vonKaenel remain the listed officers for SN&R’s parent company, Chico Community Publishing Inc., according to the California Secretary of State’s website.
Lee said that the roles of vonKaenel and Redmond would diminish over time.
“That’s the whole point is they don’t want to take on the responsibilities of the day to day,” Lee said. “That will fall under our responsibility.”
Lee doesn’t intend to hire employees for SN&R or CN&R. And while The Observer still offers a print product, which can be purchased for $1 in its newsroom, Lee isn’t currently planning to relaunch a print version of SN&R or CN&R.
Lee also has a web-only version of The Observer that he recently launched for Stockton. SN&R and CN&R are part of a growing empire.
“A client can see the benefits of advertising across all of our platforms,” Lee said. “You’re talking about from Chico all the way to Stockton, being able with one media outlet to be able to have messages.”
What SN&R did in its prime
SN&R stories could be quirky, such as a 2001 feature by RV Schiede about the Isleton Crawdad Festival that included a woman who called herself “forty-wonderful.” There were also Q&As with notable Sacramento personalities, such as legendary writer Joan Didion, who spoke to Kel Munger in 2003.
Kris Hooks, who is now an editor for The Boston Globe, worked at SN&R in the 2010s. His clippings included reporting on Black students facing higher rates of suspension for willful defiance and a cover story on Oak Park residents who offered a history of the neighborhood.
Hooks looked back fondly at his time on-staff.
“I think it was a matter of putting out this weekly product that, regardless of how old the news might have been, gave readers something interesting to read and something new to read,” Hooks said.
The stories could be fun deep dives, with longtime SN&R writer Cosmo Garvin exploring the tunnels that were created after Sacramento’s streets were raised in the 1800s.
Garvin went to work for the state in 2015 and is now an analyst for the California Department of Housing and Community Development. He said he had a lot of respect for what vonKaenel and Redmond had done with SN&R.
“When I got there, it was really, I think, at the height of alt-weeklies, kind of in the late ’90s,” Garvin said. “Just thinking about this really makes me miss that time.”
The road ahead
With The Observer, SN&R gets a well-respected operation to assume its mantle. Co-founded in 1962 by Gino Gladden, John Cole and Lee’s late father William H. Lee, The Observer has been named the best Black newspaper in the United States eight times.
“This is my life’s work,” said Lee, who is 53 and took over the paper from his father in 2015. “It gives me purpose each and every day and so I’m driven by trying to be the best that I can be for our community.”
Hooks said that Lee, who he still talks with periodically, is optimistic about the transition.
“Larry has done a lot of great work in bringing the Sac Observer forward … to a point where it could survive and thrive,” Hooks said.
Garvin isn’t sure Lee’s involvement will do much for SN&R.
“It’s obvious like the News & Review has not been what it was for a long time now,” Garvin said. “I don’t know how big a difference this final sort of handover is going to be, really.”
There might be a roadmap to follow. Jimmy Boegle edits and publishes the Reno News & Review and the Coachella Independent in Palm Springs and is a past president of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. He said that there are alt-weeklies that are thriving and that they tended to involve themselves in their communities and do innovative work.
“They’re not just sitting there,” Boegle said.
Following her cover story about going undercover as a high school student, Leibrock worked for SN&R a few more years before joining the staff at The Bee. In 2009, Leibrock returned to SN&R. Eventually, she served as editor.
Leibrock said vonKaenel believed in not just being an alternative to The Bee, but being a counterpart.
“It’s competition in a healthy way and so Jeff has always championed that and Deborah’s always championed that,” Leibrock said. “I think that that has provided an invaluable set of resources for a community.”
She was holding out hope for SN&R’s future even when vonKaenel and Redmond are no longer part of it.
“I do think that they’ve built enough of this foundation, or scaffolding of it, for it to exist even if and when they step away completely,” Leibrock said.
The Bee's Graham Womack wrote for SN&R as a freelancer for many years.
