South Tahoe Newspaper Agency closes, end of delivery of big city papers to South Lake Tahoe

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Since 1961, South Shore residents have been connected to large city newspapers because of one business, South Tahoe Newspaper Agency. The San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, N.Y. Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Reno Gazette Journal were delivered to homes and businesses by Kenneth Anderson, then later his son Steve.

Many people now connect to the news by digital copies, but the paper version is still appreciated by many.

The Andersons delivered the paper from Glenbrook to Christmas Valley, no matter the weather conditions.

A call to the business on Monday, January 22 resulted in the message that South Tahoe Newspaper Agency is closed as of today due to the cost of transportation, cost of newspapers, and readership being down. Because of these, the recording says "we can no longer afford to do this."

Steve has run the business for 25 years, taking over after his dad retired. He said newspaper delivery of papers from outside the region has been a challenge, especially over the past five years when the Sacramento Bee cut subsidy payments to businesses like his who drove to Sacramento to pick up the papers.

"We tried, but the numbers kept going down," said Steve of trying to keep the service going.

The family-owned business owners drove from Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe with the newspapers daily, then filled racks at stores and dropped off at the homes of subscribers.

The San Francisco Chronicle told Steve that the South Tahoe Newspaper Agency was their longest-running distributor.

Local subscriptions have been falling for a long time, said Steve, but he kept a solid second homeowner client list. But, those few weekends a year for them weren't enough to stay open. He said some of those vacation homeowners took four to five different papers a day while they were here.

Another big loss was the USA Today after COVID. Before the pandemic, they paid for a paper to be delivered to every hotel room at Harrah's, Harveys, the Ridge Tahoe, and the Embassy Suites. Steve walked to every room and dropped off a paper. During COVID, USA Today dropped that hotel copy service and never resurrected it.

Steve, who has lived in South Lake Taho almost all his life, said he'd be up all night, concerned about the weather and if his trucks could make it over Echo Summit. Then, if they made it over, he worried about trucks getting stuck on El Dorado County roads (the City roads were much easier to navigate).

"We did real good all those years," said Steve of bringing the papers to the people. He did say he was looking forward to waking up at Lake Tahoe and not worrying about newspapers getting stuck in snowblowers.

There are no other current newspaper delivery services on the South Shore. Safeway in South Lake Tahoe was one of those businesses that was serviced by Steve's business, and they said they are looking into options this week.