Tuesday, December 1, 2009

CityCenter Three Ways, So Far

Consistent blogging has been curtailed for the past few weeks by mammoth amount of coverage I've had to prepare in a relatively short period of time about, of course, CityCenter. As I told CEO Jim Murren during our interview last month, I don't know if this thing will save Vegas but it's sure as sugar saved my fourth quarter.

So far, three of my pieces are already up and available. They include two for the newly constituted Portfolio.Com, a 1,300-word profile of CityCenter president Bobby Baldwin and a 900-word piece on the financial woes that preceded these openings. Both are full of fun, new information, such as when Steve Wynn talks about why Baldwin, not Lanni or Murren, ought to have become MGM Mirage CEO. Scour the Web and you're unlikely to find any real profiles of Baldwin, so I'm honored to bring to you a look at one of those figures whose career from WSOP champ to Wynn lieutenant to CityCenter guru threads modern Vegas history in a unique way.

The other is a standard-issue piece overviewing the project and reporting that it's opening for Agence France-Presse. It's fine, nothing special, typical wire-service stuff.

Coming soon: My 4,100-word L.A. Weekly cover story, my LV Weekly column and at least one Sphere.Com story. Don't know if the New York Times is going to want anything or not; they don't seem to have a freelance budget anymore. Hope that changes early next year, but in the meantime I'm thrilled to be making headway in all of these new markets as I'd never written for the LA Weekly or Portfolio before.

Meanwhile, I offer up this sensational dusk view of CityCenter from the 22nd floor of my now-vacant Panorama condo. (Looking to rent? Email me!)

Moon over aria and #citycenter from the 22nd floor of panorama: on Twitpic

I love this view so much, it's now my phone wallpaper.

6 comments:

casey said...

hey steve, is it just me or is the link broken for the second page of the baldwin story?

THE STRIP PODCAST said...

casey - the site's glitchy. try again. it works. others have had similar problems with one or the other piece. dunno what that's about. thanks!

atdnext said...

I actually found your Conde Nast piece right at the portfolio.com site, and I'm reading it now. It seems like we'll be bombarded with "All City Center, all the time!" at all the local news outlets and all the national outlets covering Las Vegas, so we might as well embrace it.

I'm glad this at least means you'll get some more work. You deserve it. :-)

James Taylor said...

Great pic from your Panorama condo. Any chance of posting the same pic but bigger and with better quality? Or do we have to rent the condo for that?

THE STRIP PODCAST said...

UCSB - yeah, i used my iphone and it doesn't blow-up well. I had no battery in my digicam, stupidly. Maybe I'll go back and try again at some point this weekend.

THE STRIP PODCAST said...

UCSB - yeah, i used my iphone and it doesn't blow-up well. I had no battery in my digicam, stupidly. Maybe I'll go back and try again at some point this weekend.