The Pahrump Valley Times will observe a special milestone later this year as the publication hits the half-century mark.
From its roots as a free monthly community newspaper in late 1970, growing into a weekly within its early years of operation, the Times has increased its print frequency in the Nye County area to become a semiweekly newspaper that reaches Beatty, Amargosa Valley and as far as Shoshone, California.
“With recently being named interim editor of the Pahrump Valley Times, I would like to take this time to thank the residents in Pahrump and surrounding areas in Nye County and beyond for keeping the newspaper a long-standing tradition in the community,” said Interim Editor Jeffrey Meehan. “I feel honored to lead the publication’s editorial department and its excellent team, especially at such a notable period in its history, and I look forward to deploying the goal of bringing great, community-focused coverage for the region in the coming years.”
The Times will celebrate its 50th anniversary at the end of 2020.
At present, the newspaper is published each Wednesday and Friday.
In the rear-view
The Times started as a free monthly community newspaper in December 1970 and began publishing as a weekly roughly six years later, in 1976.
The publication was founded by Milton “Milt” Bozanic, who died on March 7, 2019.
During an interview back in 2016 with the Times, Bozanic spoke about why he took the risk of starting up a community newspaper so early in modern Pahrump’s development.
Bozanic noted that with all his years selling advertising in the television business, his income became dependent upon his ability to sell advertising to support what he was doing.
For a time, Bozanic worked in advertising and hosted his own popular television show entitled, “Look Who’s Talking with Milt Bozanic,” for more than 10 years.
“I was an independent operator and I understood the risk,” he recalled.
When the paper began accepting legal ads in Dec. 1979, it essentially established itself as the official newspaper of record for Pahrump and Nye County.
One-man production
When the Times was a weekly, production of a new edition each week was a one-man show, where Bozanic did all the reporting, writing, and layout in the publication’s early years.
He would print thousands of copies for each edition, which Bozanic said would reach those rural markets in prior interviews with the Times.
It was available in Pahrump and other surrounding communities in southern and central Nevada, including in Mesquite, Amargosa Valley and Tonopah, where copies were mailed for distribution.
The first issues of the newspaper were composed entirely by hand, which was quite different from today, when everything is done with a computer, according to a 2016 interview with Bozanic.
A little later, Bozanic acquired a “primitive” headline setter that formed the headlines one word at a time.
It took all Bozanic’s energy and he never missed an issue, but he realized that he was depleting his reserves.
Competition in the past
Along the way, the Times had its share of local competition, as the Pahrump Mirror began its story in 1983 with then-owners Robert and Lindsey Lowes of Beatty, who led the press as The Death Valley Gateway Gazette at that time.
In 1992, the Pahrump Mirror publication entered a new era of ownership and came under the helm of Joe Richards, then-owner of two bordellos in Crystal.
Richards sold those holdings to Dennis Hof in 2010, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, affiliate publication to the Times, reported around the time of the sale.
About a year and a half after the Times appeared (December, 1970), the Pahrump Valley Star began publication as an “occasional sheet” inside the Times.
The Star became a weekly on July 31, 1975, more than a year before the Times became a weekly.
Bozanic ended up purchasing the Pahrump Valley Star in August 1981.
The Pahrump Valley Times became the Pahrump Valley Times-Star for a time, then the “Star” was dropped from the title.
Two other Pahrump Valley publications were Desert Living, which began publishing in the summer of 1979 as a quarterly, and the Pahrump Tribune, a bimonthly that began in October 1979, but both were short-lived.
In November 1989, Milt Bozanic sold the Pahrump Valley Times to the Rich Thurlow family.
A new era
Stephens Media picked up the brand in 2002.
In a 2015 article Times article, it was reported that the publication came under new ownership as part of a deal to sell its parent company, Stephens Media, which purchased the Times back in 2002, to New York-based New Media Investment Group.
The $140 million cash deal included Nye County-based newspapers the Pahrump Valley Times, Tonopah Times-Bonanza &Goldfield News, and The Mirror, as well as the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Clark County, the state’s largest newspaper.
The family of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson now own the Review-Journal and affiliate publications across Nevada.
Interim Editor Jeffrey Meehan contributed to this story.
Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes
Editor’s note: Information in this article was compiled through Pahrump Valley Times and Las Vegas Review-Journal archives and Times research.