Mr Nicholls has overseen some major changes at the Advocate as the newspaper industry has gone through a rapid transformation to adapt to the digital age.

He said it had been a great privilege to be editor of a newspaper which can trace its history back to 1848 but the time was right to move on to other challenges.

"My wife, Jo, and I love Bathurst and this city has been very good to us so we won't be leaving," he said.

"Our youngest child was born here and all three of our kids completed all their schooling here so Bathurst is our home.

"But 17 years is a long time in any job, let alone editing a daily newspaper, so I think the time is right to pursue something else."

In reflecting on his time at the Advocate, Mr Nicholls said one of the biggest stories he recalled gave him a real "baptism of fire" as editor.

"I'd only been at the Advocate for a few months and was sitting at home on a Friday evening when I got the call to say that Kelso High School was on fire," Mr Nicholls said.

"We were living in Llanarth and I remember as I was driving into the office I could see the glow of the fire from the other side of town.

"Because the fire was late in the evening our Saturday edition of the paper had already been printed but, along with then regional manager Andrew Meenahan, we decided to produce a special eight-page feature that could be printed that night and physically wrapped around the paper at the print site in Dubbo.

"It took a huge effort from our team of journalists and photographers to turn it around in just a few hours but the end result was one of the best things we've done in my time here."

Mr Nicholls said a special edition marking the death of Peter Brock in 2006 and a 72-page commemorative edition for Bathurst's bicentenary in 2015 had also stuck with him.

"The bicentenary edition was months of work but we wanted to produce something very special that was to be the Western Advocate's birthday gift to Bathurst," he said.

"Alan McRae from the Bathurst and District Historical Society also came on board for that project and his incredible expertise in that area was crucial to its success."

Mr Nicholls said he was proud of the paper's ongoing coverage of the missing persons cases of Jessica Small, Janine Vaughan and Andrew Russell, led by senior journalist Jacinta Carroll who has covered all three stories from day one.

He said the paper also strongly supported Rail Action Bathurst's push for a return daily rail service between Bathurst and Sydney and rallied behind the small community of Sallys Flat when it was short-listed as a potential site for a nuclear waste dump.

The Western Advocate has picked up many awards in Mr Nicholls' time and was named daily newspaper of the year at the 2011 NSW Country Press Association awards and overall NSW country paper of the year in 2015.

He said the rapid rise of online publishing had been the biggest change he'd seen while at the Advocate, with the newspaper's website now allowing it to report breaking news as it happens - something past editors could not have imagined.

"In newspapers, it used to be that you had your deadline to meet each night and if anything happened after that it would usually have to wait for the next edition," he said.

"Now newspapers are part of the 24-hour news cycle."

Mr Nicholls thanked all the Advocate's staff, readers, subscribers and advertisers for their support over the years and said the Western Advocate was now set up to keep playing a crucial role in Bathurst's daily life for years to come.

Thursday will be Mr Nicholls' last day in the chair and a new editor will be appointed in the new year.

He will take a media role within a NSW Government department in the new year.

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