The Society of Professional Journalists Norcal presented its 2025 Excellence in Journalism Award for Distinguished Service to Journalism to Jane Braxton Little, editor-in-chief of The Plumas Sun. The Nov. 13 ceremony was a proud moment for the whole Sun team.
The award recognizes individuals for the advancement of journalism, and implicitly celebrates the importance of the press in advancing civic discourse and the processes of democracy. It’s an endorsement of our reason for being: our belief that communities are stronger when they have access to the unbiased news reliable journalism provides.
We credit you, our readers, for your steadfast support from the very beginning. Your encouragement drives us to broaden and deepen our coverage of Plumas County’s communities. As we move forward, we are strengthened by knowing that shining the light the press provides makes us a more productive, prosperous and equitable county.
Meeting — and learning from — our peers in community journalism
When we started The Plumas Sun, we were lucky to have a wealth of writing, editorial, web, nonprofit and business experience on the board of directors and among our volunteers. What none of us had was experience starting or running a newspaper.
We didn’t want to lose local news, so we just went for it. Less than a month elapsed between our first meeting, held after hours in a downtown Quincy storefront, to the launch of The Plumas Sun website Aug. 1, 2023. We built the plane in midair, learning as we went. In a lot of ways we’re still doing that.
For us, attending the award ceremony was especially inspiring because it gave us a chance to meet representatives from other organizations taking a creative approach to building new, sustainable community news outlets. The SJP awards “small division” winners were peppered with tiny, scrappy newsrooms and collaboratives serving populations that larger traditional media doesn’t or can’t — organizations we can share with and learn from as we continue to pursue our mission.
There is so much ahead for The Plumas Sun in our third year, from hiring our first full-time staffer to realizing one of our greatest ambitions: a print edition. We can’t wait to share it all with you.