Then and now: Publications come, go and grow
Christopher “Flip” Brandi printed Lake Tahoe News since the 1950s. It generally appeared Wednesdays, and later two days a week.
The offices and printing press eventually were in the block building now housing Verizon Wireless on Highway 50 near Tahoe Keys Boulevard (next to Steamer’s).
In a rear room of that building also were the audio facilities of KHVR-FM (“Heavenly Valley Radio”), 99.9, which survived barely a year in 1961, transmitting from Heavenly’s parking lot. Brandi held an interest in KHVR-FM along with Harrah’s engineer Jack Dumars. There were too few FM listeners (or FM radios) in 1961.
The Tahoe Daily Tribune also published two days a week in the early 1960s, always on days alternate of Brandi’s paper. It additionally sub-billed itself as the Tahoe Sierra Tribune. Chapman Wentworth was the publisher in 1963.
Usually we had one or the other local newspaper on four weekdays of each week.
Do you remember the Tahoe Chronicle weekly on Thursdays? It was started in 1963 at “Stateline, California” by Edwin B. Brown and William Dolan. The pictured masthead is dated Thursday, May 11, 1967.
My thanks to Bob Rockwell of South Lake Tahoe who loaned me these historic newspapers. I am scanning various memories from them for future sharing here on what has become our modern — and daily — local news source.
– Bill Kingman
tahoe reader was by far the most entertaining
So Bill, I know that Brian Maffly, one of the best local print reporters to work in Tahoe, moved on to the Salt Lake City Tribune, and Jeff Delong, also a good reporter, if a bit obnoxious if you were the one being reported on, is with the Reno Gazette Journal. But what ever happened to your fellow broadcaster, Terry Laird?
Terry Laird = one of the best on-air deliveries ever. Sorry, I lost track after she went to the RGJ 1990s.
Bill, for a couple of years I was in a situation where I was providing her with press releases from time to time. She and I knew each other pretty well by then, so I would try to time my morning releases to her, faxing them so that she’d get them just before going on the air with her 0800 news. She, of course, wanted to re-write them but, if I was right on her deadline (and it was something too interesting for her to ignore), she’d be forced to go with my release verbatim. Immediately following her news broadcast I’d phone her and compliment her on how her writing was improving.
If you knew her, you know how annoyed that made her. She was a friend though, and it was all in good fun. And I did write pretty good releases back in the day.
I didn’t know she went to RGJ. She was a radio person – if they were looking for a writer . . . . . .
My standard for on-the-air deliveries was pretty much set by Don Sherwood at KSFO. You were great; Terry was good. But none of you were “Donnie Babe”.