#MediaMonday – Brandon Bowers
Today’s #MediaMonday comes to us from northwest Arizona and the Colorado River area, where Brandon Bowers is now regional editor for River City Newspapers. In addition to his position as editor of Today’s News-Herald and Parker Pioneer, Bowers is also overseeing RCN’s recent acquisitions, the Kingman Miner, Mohave Valley Daily News, Laughlin Times, Needles Desert Star and Wickenburg Sun.
Brandon, time to share:
I am a native of San Jose, Calif., and grew up in Manteca, a small agricultural community in California’s Central Valley.
I was 16 years old when I started as a newsroom clerk at the Manteca Bulletin, a small daily newspaper in my hometown. I went on to study journalism at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, Calif., spending more than two years with the campus newspaper, The Impact, finishing the program as news editor.
I worked for nearly 20 years as a reporter and editor at newspapers in California and New Mexico before moving to Lake Havasu City in 2014, when I became editor of Today’s News-Herald and the Parker Pioneer.
I am excited about my new role in which I have the opportunity to help shape the editorial team across all RCN properties that will share in our editorial vision of creating a Mohave County information center. This entails joining our seven newspapers together and moving RCN into the future with the news that is important to our readers in both digital and print.
I have had the opportunity to lead a number of newsrooms over my 24-year career in journalism. As managing editor of the Turlock Journal in 2004 I was responsible for launching a new features section and redesigning the rest of the newspaper. I was the first online content editor for the Merced Sun-Star, a daily newspaper serving about 20,000 print subscribers in California’s Central Valley. In 2015, I was named one of Editor & Publisher’s 25 under 35.
I covered some of my favorite stories in Carlsbad, N.M., where I led a tiny daily newspaper that regularly broke news of national interest. Carlsbad is a small town of about 30,000 people and nothing around for miles in any direction, but thanks to its position in the heart of the bustling oil and gas fields of the Permian Basin, and its importance to the nation’s nuclear waste storage strategies, and its close proximity to Carlsbad Caverns National Park and the Lincoln National Forest, there was no shortage of stories to cover.
When I’m not working, I serve on the board of directors for Hospice of Havasu and I’m a member of the London Bridge Rotary Club. I live in Havasu with my wife Amanda and our three children, Aimee, 15, Sophiamarie, 11, and Noah, 8, along with a growing menagerie of pets.
I enjoy spending time at Lake Havasu, particularly kayaking in the Bridgewater Channel. I also enjoy hiking in the desert that surrounds Lake Havasu City.
Favorite foods: Anything spicy. You can’t go wrong with a Nashville hot chicken sandwich. Barley Brothers in Lake Havasu City makes a really good burger with Thai peanut sauce and jalapeno jelly. I love seeking out local breweries whenever we go to a new town.
Favorite music: 1990s alternative, punk or ska. Or any Weird Al song.
Lake Havasu City is a great news town. It’s a resort town with a population that swells to six figures during the busiest tourist periods, but Havasu still clings to its small-town roots. It’s a great place to raise a family — low crime, beautiful surroundings, and lots to do. Locals are invested and engaged with their community, with a lot more interest in what goes on at City Hall than I’ve seen in other communities.
Havasu is home to a high number of seniors and winter visitors, so the printed version of the newspaper is still very important to the community. That said, we also operate the largest news websites in Northwest Arizona and we’ll put an even bigger focus on digital in the months and years ahead. We’re seeing tremendous growth in online ad and reader revenue so we’re excited about what the future holds.
You can follow me Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many other social media sites at @brandonbowers.
