Based on reader feedback, web analytics, SN&R’s storytelling history and the broader community conversation, here are the top ten stories for 2025 that we think are worth a second look if you missed them the first time.

10. ‘The community is the therapy.’ Clubhouse International is attempting to bring a new model of mental health treatment to those living on Sacramento’s streets’ by Odin Rasco (News)

For decades Sacramento News & Review has been a pathfinder for deeply reported, empathetic, solutions-oriented journalism around homelessness. Odin Rasco worked with us on this excellent piece in partnership with the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. It brings the receipts when it comes to the current state affairs in Sacramento County, but it also focuses on at least one new, innovative approach to the slow-rolling tragedy on our streets.         

9. ‘A blast of Bernie in Folsom’ by Ken Magri (News)

In early spring, Sacramento-area Democrats, progressives and fans of good governance were all feeling a sense of disorientation. A combination of DOGE-related chaos and massive, often reckless federal deportation efforts were pushing California into a stupor. Peoples’ spirits were down — but two big personalities were on the way to help. When Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arrived in Folsom, so did veteran News & Review writer Ken Magri. Our reporter did some old-school shoe-leathering to capture the vibes at their  “Fighting Oligarchy” tour stop. Not only did Magri reflect the electric atmosphere from an unbelievable turnout, his story on the event was a smash hit on social media.

8. ‘Nightshades: Sacramento Noir is a book that conjures fiction mapping onto the city’s true murders and dark memories’ by Scott Thomas Anderson (Arts & Culture)

Authors from Sacramento don’t get the credit they deserve for helping keep California a thriving center of the literary arts: Their contributions to American letters are great, but wordsmiths from Los Angeles and the Bay Area are still burning all of the oxygen from the room when it comes to perceptions. However, Capital City scribes were front-and-center when Akashic Books published a new fiction collection in February called “Sacramento Noir.” We wanted to report on this riveting anthology, which includes writers like John Freeman, William T. Vollmann and Naomi J. Williams, but we knew that our partners in Solving Sacramento were already working on a mainstream feature about the project. So, hoping to augment rather than compete, SN&R pounded out a piece of long-form that explored how several of the book’s invented stories map onto real-life crimes in the history of the city. In the end, we heard from a lot of Sacramento book lovers who enjoyed the approach we took. 

7. ‘Meet LabRats, the Sacramento jazz quartet behind some of your favorite musicians’ by Steph Rodriguez (Arts & Culture)

Six years ago, if you predicted that the musicians who’d be bringing all the younger faces to the city’s clubs in 2025 would be experimental jazz players, people would have told you to get your head examined. But that’s exactly the case these days, and the group known as LabRats is one of the big reasons. In this story, Steph Rodriguez  — a top culture writer for SN&R with support from Solving Sacramento  — rolls up her sleeves to break down how these cerebral, stylish artists of the beat managed to capture a city’s musical imagination, doing so with an American sound that is both traditional and ever-evolving.

6. ‘Historic Sacramento restaurant Jim-Denny’s closes after an emotional last service’ by Jacob Peterson (News)

Sometimes it’s difficult to decide if SN&R’s website should classify a story as ‘news’ or ‘culture.’ Jacob Peterson presented that conundrum with this strongly written piece about the final days of the beloved Jim-Denny’s diner. Peterson was writing about the incarnation of the landmark that was in the hands of popular chef-owner N’Gina Guyton, who’d previously made her name with the restaurant South. In this story, Peterson broke news about why the staple was shuttering (it was a lease dispute rather than lack of customers), but also delved into why the tiny eatery from 1934 meant so much to the city’s broader sense of itself. This is the kind of story that editors love to see.   

5. ‘Deliverer of the death blows: ‘Aggro,’ the main killer in Roseville’s barbaric train-hopper murder, is granted early parole by state officials’ by Scott Thomas Anderson (News)

Local media has been slow to report on how many extremely violent offenders from Sacramento and Placer counties have been granted surprisingly early parole by state correctional officials. This has included the release of prisoners who have tried to murder our friends and neighbors because of the color of their skin, convicts who have killed victims in cold blood in front of their families, and predators who have committed stomach-turning crimes against small children. Sometimes, when a journalist who’s actually aware of these early paroles mentions them to general readers, the reaction is bipartisan shock, outrage or both. This piece is a follow-up to SN&R’s often-discussed 2017 over story “Blood on the Tracks.” In it, we used the unexpectedly early parole of that previous story’s main killer as a window for reporting on broader issues in California’s correctional system.

4. ‘As deportation fears come home to Sacramento, city officials and nonprofits try to form a phalanx of hope’ by Samin Vafaee (News)      

Since the moment Donald Trump reclaimed the presidency last November, SN&R has been hearing from readers about the increasing level of fear in local communities. It’s an anxiety people are particularly feeling around what might happen to their undocumented coworkers, fellow students, longtime friends, stalwart neighbors  — and even their spouses and family members. This year, we relied on our co-publishing partners at Capital & Main and CalMatters to help cover much of the federal policy implications. However, in this local SN&R piece by Samin Vafaee, our objective was to bring the issue back to its most-human components. Vafaee did that, and her passion for telling this story shines through from start to finish.   

3. ‘We have had enough!’ Tribes, Enviros and Delta advocates rally in Sacramento as Newsom tries pushing anti-CEQA bills for tunnel’ by Dan Bacher (News)

Throughout 2025, California Gov. Gavin Newsom gained national praise and adulation for standing up to the least-popular policies and actions of the White House. But while Newsom was becoming a darling of progressive media across the U.S.  — launching a podcast and trolling Donald Trump on social media  — he was continuing to alienate, and infuriate, a broad swath of environmentalists, indigenous tribes, small business owners and fish advocacy groups, not to mention local governments in seven different California counties. This tension is over his continued push to build a $20 billion tunnel in the Delta — one that’s universally opposed by conservation groups but championed by Newsom’s mega-donors in Southern California. Some of the state’s own data suggest that the tunnel is a major threat to fish and wildlife, particularly wild salmon populations. So far, the approval process has been slow enough that Newsom will surely be out of office when a decision is made. In September, the governor attempted to change that dynamic by slipping changes to California’s environmental laws into the end of the legislative session. While the public blowback was furious, strangely enough, reporter Dan Bacher’s story for SN&R amounted to some of the only coverage of it. That was evident in the fact that our web traffic for the piece was through the roof. Newsom’s effort eventually failed. For now.

2. ‘Keepers of the quiet goodbye: Meet the people who pulled off a hospice miracle by overcoming society’s fear of homelessness and death itself’ by Scott Thomas Anderson (News)

How could it take almost a decade to build a small, professionally-run hospice shelter for terminally ill Sacramantans living on our streets? More importantly, why was the public resistance to such a facility so great that it required experts, elected officials and volunteers from different walks of life to join forces just to give the shelter a fighting chance?  The battle over making Joshua’s House a reality raises a lot of uncomfortable questions about who we are as a community. Now that the shelter is finally caring for people, and doing that without causing any disruptions we know of to its neighborhood, it’s easy for local newspapers and TV stations to show up and write feel-good pieces about the project. In this enterprise story, which was a collaboration between SN&R and Solving Sacramento, we wanted to reveal the individuals working quietly behind the scene who never gave up, and never stopped fighting  —  and how they collectively formed a moral engine behind this shelter that ultimately triumphed.

1.‘Remembering Ground Chuck: Sacramento says goodbye to its man of multitudes’ by Odin Rasco (Arts & Culture)

Sacramento News & Review has had many iterations over the decades. At times, it has put most of its energy into celebrating the cultural life of the city. In other instances, it has focused on being a sharp-elbowed watchdog and civic alarm system  —  willfully ignoring the niceties and conventions around access journalism. Perhaps at its best moments, SN&R has made the creative community feel seen and appreciated while still acting as a ground-up news platform for the most-marginalized and ignored neighborhoods around the capital. But throughout all of its forms and faces, SN&R has always been a proud alt-weekly publication in the mold of the Village Voice, one dedicated to covering the rogue individualists who give the city a character all its own. This piece by Odin Rasco is in that long tradition of SN&R, saying goodbye to one of those smiling individualists who the community will never forget.