Dave Berns' Weird Gay Adventure

Let's get this out of the way first: It doesn't bother me that I wasn't quoted in Dave Berns' Vegas Inc cover on the gay marketing of Vegas despite spending a bunch of time essentially providing him with information he used as well as many of his other sources.

Really. I do that to other people all the time, it's part of the process. We interview lots of people, gather information, decide what to include based on all sorts of criteria. No big deal.

No, what bothers me is that Dave Berns is well aware the data he cited about gay travel trends in Vegas are not scientific or reliable and he used them anyway as if it is. Few journalists would rely on a poll on a website as some sort of fact, but he nonetheless used numbers derived in very nearly the same way.

Dave (left) and I discussed this at length, the fact that Community Marketing Inc out of San Francisco polls a self-selected group of gay and lesbian people via the Internet and that the respondents are generally the same urban, tech-savvy people poll after poll. The tell-tale sign ought to be such idiotic CMI conclusions as that Las Vegas is the nation's No. 1 travel destination for middle-aged lesbians. Yeah, right.

CMI uses no random sampling, no effort to be demographically diverse in any way. As Berns was finishing his piece, I forwarded to him the latest CMI "survey" to show him how shoddy their methodology is. He replied with agreement. I also told him to ask Bob Witeck, a well-known GLBT publicist and marketer in Washington, for his views on CMI's data, but Witeck later told me Berns didn't bring up the topic at all.

Instead, Berns wrote these passages anyway:

A 2009 Community Marketing study found that the average household income for gay men and women is $81,500, or about 80 percent higher than the figure for the typical US household. Forty percent of gay men reported household incomes in excess of $100,000 annually. Thirty-six percent of lesbians reported household incomes of more than $100,000.

[snip]

Las Vegas consistently ranks among the top business and leisure destinations for the 4,296 LGBT travelers surveyed by Community Marketing. New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas typically hold the top three spots, with lesbians between the ages of 18 and 54 choosing Las Vegas as their favorite getaway.

Where's the skepticism about CMI? Where is the explanation to readers of their methodology? It's not there because that would distract from and convolute the story that Berns wanted to tell. There actually is a very good, credible source regarding GLBT average income, and what it shows is that lesbian couples are among the least affluent configurations because on the whole American women make less than men and two women make less than two men or a man and a woman. Lee Badgett of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who has a Ph.D. in economics from Berkley, even wrote a whole frigging book about it.

But hey, never let bad data get in the way of a good story, right?

It's not the only place Berns lazily cites ridiculous data. This, too, is a joke:

Statisticians and social scientists have long argued that up to 10 percent of the US population is gay. The figure could be much larger.

Uh, no. Actually, the 10 percent figure has long been debunked as a perversion of statistical analysis by pseudo-scientist Alfred Kinsey 70 years ago, as this NPR story from just last month explains. The most recent studies -- say the ones done repeatedly since the mid-1990s when gays finally started to feel OK about even answering such questionnaires -- put the GLBT portion of the general population at about 3.5%. No, Dave, it's not likely to be "much larger." The root of the 10 percent cannard has been disproved for so long that we had seminars at the national convention of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association a decade ago on why it's important to report these things accurately even if they don't "help the cause."

Finally, this is 2011. Gay people are on TV every day, getting married or marching as active-duty military personnel in pride parades or dancing funky in the aisles of their daytime talk shows. So why, oh why, did Berns feel the need to quote anonymous gay people in a fluffy trend story?

Anonymity, it has evidently been forgotten, is supposed to be a journalist's last resort when he truly cannot get the information or perspective any other way or, perhaps, if he just doesn't have the time to keep beating the bushes for someone who will answer on the record. It's become a cancer on the credibility of the media, another reason the public has consistently downgraded its regard for the information we provide. We owe our readers better, and we owe them a better reason for using anonymity than merely that a person with nothing to lose just didn't want to give their name while providing comments that could be obtained elsewhere.

There was just no need for this. Dave had several folks, myself included, who could have used email and Twitter to get him dozens of gays happy to talk on the record about Vegas. It appears he was so enslaved to his opening anecdote about the gay Blue Moon Resort -- he did go out of the office for that bit, after all! -- that his commenters could only be men lounging at that pool on that day and evidently they played hard-to-get with him. Never mind that a 24-room gay motel doesn't reflect anything about a trend in a city with 150,000 rooms, but that's a whole other thing.

If Berns couldn't find any gay travelers to talk on the record about their views on Vegas in the week or two he worked on this piece, that's intensely sad news for Vegas Inc and a disturbing indication of where a once-outstanding reporter's energy level has sunk. Then again, the editor -- an out gay man who ought to have known how idiotic it is to cite that 10% Kinsey figure -- didn't hold him to much of a standard anyhow, so whatever.

Media Muddle: Gross Pools, Due Credit & Stupid Questions

A few bits and pieces of stuff that caught my eye lately in the Vegas-related media:

* Nothing makes me happier than when a local freelance writer breaks a good, enterprising story out from under the established press, and that's what Melissa Arseniuk did on Sunday in The Daily with her probe of the cleanliness of the pool water at several Vegas "day club" venues. It's thoroughly disgusting but also a pretty great idea and one that it's fairly unlikely either major media company -- or Arseniuk's former employer Vegas Seven for that matter -- would do as it would put at risk one of the few steady advertising revenue streams that have held up through the recession. Nicely done, although did she have to invoke the most predictable of Vegas cliches in her lead? You have that awesome a story idea, it deserves equally original writing.

* Anyone who cares about Vegas and Vegas business matters ought to be subscribed and listening to the Vegas Gang podcast to begin with. But if you need convincing, pick up their superb and frank interview with M Resort developer Anthony Marnell III.

* On that same VG episode, former In Business Las Vegas editor Jeff Simpson noted the meager Vegas media response to the passing of Terry Lanni and used it as a mark of why it's so important for people who care about Vegas -- and cover it -- to pay attention to what's going on on blogs such as Two Way Hard Three and VegasTripping. (I'd add in Stiffs & Georges, too, as required visiting.) Of course, I agree, but Jeff left out one more important piece of it: The established media also must start to acknowledge when online publications break news. Norm Clarke of the R-J is the only one who does so consistently. It was VegasTripping.Com that broke the Aria Legionnaires' disease story, but for whatever reason Jon Ralston would rather give the scoop credit to his hated rival the Review-Journal (?!?!?) than the correct outlet. Lookit:

That's at least two errors in two sentences for Ralston, who loves to mock the R-J for its mistakes but won't ever correct these. First, VT had this up at 8:50 a.m. and the R-J had this up at 9:46 a.m., so VT wins. Oddly, Ralston should have known because he linked to the VT posting. But, also, VT's Chuck Monster is not a local. The blog is based in California. Oopsie.

* Speaking of David McKee, he now has my blessing to be upset with Brian Greenspun for not memorializing Terry Lanni in his Sunday column. In fact, neither newspaper even bothered to write an editorial about Lanni and Vegas Inc just reran Liz Benston's first-day obit. A shameful, disrespectful goodbye for a monumental figure. I was glad to see Howard Stutz follow up with a report about Lanni's memorial service in Southern California, but why wasn't that in the newspaper, too?

* A few things I learned from other journalists this week:

• In Nevada, 75 percent of families choose to donate organs when loved ones who never indicated a preference are in life-ending condition.
• The Nevada desert is used to approximate Mars' surface.
• China had this awesome-looking fake Apple store for a few minutes.
  
• Free public wi-fi can be dangerous for the businesses that furnish it, too
• Laura Myers is a gifted writer as well as a nice lady, and here's the proof
• Far-right R-J columnist Glenn Cook can be human and funny, too.

* In journalism school, you learn never to open a story with a question. I'm OK with opening with questions -- I never do it, but I don't always hate it -- but I do think there ought to be a rule that you never open a story with a dumb question. You know, like when J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun writes:

Throw this onto the ever-growing pile of the baffling: Why is there no discussion about blight on the Strip? Why is there no sense of concern — and with it, fresh ideas — about the long stretches of our most important economic and cultural asset that are pocked with half-finished projects or just empty land?

Is he kidding? Maybe this goes back to Simpson's point about Vegas journalists needing to pay attention to what's going on online. "No discussion?" There's discussion constantly on the Vegas-related podcasts, at least, including Vegas Gang and The Strip. There was discussion of it in the MSM, too, when Steve Wynn paid to put up trees in front of the stalled Echelon to improve the view a little, when Sheldon Adelson put a wrap on the stalled St. Regis condos and Caesars Entertainment finished the exterior of the stalled Octavius Tower and when MGM Resorts finished the exterior of the vexed Harmon and when the Stratosphere CEO told me for my LVW column that what I dubbed as Decay Alley at the north end of the Strip post-Sahara would be rough on them.

Which is to say, there's been discussion. No, Patrick, you're not the first to notice this. You may have an interesting idea for what to do up there, although I've never heard the many tourists I hear from regularly suggest what Vegas is missing is an outdoor market where they can buy crafts and crap in 105-degree heat. But when you open like that, you show how little you pay attention to the discourse going on all around you.

* Norm Clarke is a maestro at finding the Vegas angle of just about any celebrity death, and there seem to be an awful lot of 'em. So here's what he came up with regarding Amy Winehouse. Amazing, really.

* In case you missed it, I raved about Andrew Kiraly's novel Crit on The Strip last week. It was our Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week for July 20, too. I read it in about four hours and I'm a slow reader. Buy it.

Dave Berns Feels "Relief" About Leaving KNPR

In this week's Vegas media shocker, Dave Berns, the host of KNPR's two-hour daily talk and interview show "State of Nevada," left his job abruptly today.

It was a poorly kept secret around KNPR and among those who appeared often on the program -- myself included -- that Berns had grown frustrated and uncomfortable with the direction of the program and clashed with KNPR General Manager Flo Rogers. But today, reached by phone, Berns insisted the parting was amicable.

"Right now, I have a sense of relief and it's because doing the show every day creates a lot of pressure," said Berns, a former Review-Journal business writer and editor and publisher of Las Vegas Business Press, both owned by Stephens Media. "It's nice not to have some pressure."

Berns was vague about his differences with Rogers, who created the show along with former Vegas TV anchor Gwen Castaldi in 2003. Berns subbed for Castaldi often and then became the full-time anchor four years ago after her retirement.

"Basically, Flo and I have had a number of conversations about the direction of the program," he said. "She sees it one way, I see it as another. I won't go into specifics. This is about the direction of the show. The bottom line is, Flo hired me four years ago and this show is her creation. It's not my bat and not my ball. She's been great to me, given me every opportunity to grow professionally and as a person."

As Dave would with a cagey guest, I asked the question a few more ways. He's evidently learned a thing or two from all those politicians he interviewed, though.

"The show I've been doing is the show I could see us continuing to do," he said. "Flo has a slightly different version of it. I don't want to go into her version. We've agreed to leave it at that."

Rogers was unavailable for comment today but said through a spokeswoman: "Obviously, we wish Dave all the best."

Berns had already been stripped of some of his authority related to the show earlier this year. He was, as host and senior producer, the final arbiter of what went on the program until last summer when former Las Vegas Business Press editor Ian Mylchreest became executive producer. Berns says now that this was a logical division of labor, that it did free him to focus on his hosting responsibilities and that Ian remains a close friend. "It just takes a lot of work to keep up with you and (Steve) Sebelius and (Jon) Ralston on Nevada Week in Review and reading all your blogs," he said. "I welcomed the change."

If all this had been brewing for so long, why now?

"It just felt right for the both of us," Berns said. "Part of it is, it's really important for the station to have a good clean transition, so the artificial nature of the end of the year helps."

Berns said he's got several shows on tape to be played this month and that the December holidays are typically a period for reruns anyhow.

Berns brought to his role at KNPR a newspaperman's doggedness with politicians and public officials that Castaldi lacked as a former TV anchor. Castaldi dwelled frequently in long interviews with Vegas old-timers whereas Berns showed a fascination for topics that occasionally were only loosely related to Las Vegas but could be involved in the broader water-cooler discussion of the day. He'd frequently invoke his Jewish, New Yorker and Baby Boomer credentials to engender comraderie with the likes of Harvey Fierstein, Hal Prince and others.

His interviews with Andre Agassi and Tony Curtis rank among his most memorable.

"When Agassi was in recently, I almost felt like I was talking to my younger brother," he said. "And when Tony Curtis was in, I almost felt like I was talking to my father. For some reason, the shorthand was all there and it just worked."

No anchor replacement has been announced.

[Disclosure: I have been a frequent guest of "State of Nevada" and substitute hosted twice this year.]

Tiger = Vegas Stimulus Package?

It's a little disconcerting that the same night as my column about how Tiger's scandal could help Vegas, the mayor himself says so and Jon Ralston smacks him down on Twitter as buffoonish. Ahh, well. For the record, I am not saying that committing adultery while in Vegas is something I endorse. I'm just saying, as I suspect the mayor might, that it's good for business. There's a difference. Anyhow, enjoy. -sf

Welcome to Fabulous Lust Vegas, Mr. Woods

BY STEVE FRIESS

I got dragged kicking and screaming into an on-air discussion about the Tiger Woods sex scandal last week by KNPR State of Nevada host Dave Berns. I had happily avoided the topic in its first week and felt smug and superior about sticking to the real and important news of CityCenter and strippermobiles.

“I don’t want to talk about Tiger Woods, Dave,” I moaned at 8 a.m., when Dave asked me to come in for a ramble about several recent topics. “I just don’t care about him.”

Still, the opportunity to discuss the other matters on the docket propelled me to show up and play along. So at about 10 a.m., Berns raised a question that I felt at the time was an erudite person’s excuse to roll in the gutter:

“The revelations that are coming out about Tiger Woods’ personal life, could this endanger Las Vegas’ reputation in some way as a place that you can go and you can have a bacchanal, you can have a wide-open party, you can spend money and you can do it assuredly knowing that whatever you do there truly does stay there?”

Go ahead, roll your eyes. I sure did. And then, when I began answering and started paying a little more attention to this matter elsewhere, I realized it is a legitimate question with, to my mind, a pretty surprising answer.

You see, the more I’ve thought about it, the more it appears to me that the Tiger Woods scandal and its now-multiple Vegas tie-ins is actually one of the best things that has happened to this city in a long, long time.

First, though, let’s answer Dave’s question. Do these revelations betray the “what happens here stays here” ethos?

Read the REST at LasVegasWeekly.Com.

The Show is UP: Bill Boyd

Here's this week's show. At the end of it, Miles shouts out for your Vietnamese and Thai favorites (no Lotus of Siam, please), so go ahead and share if you wish in the comments here. Otherwise, the banter this week is especially amusing and we hope you enjoy it all. Click on the date below to make it play or right-click to save it and listen at your leisure. You can subscribe, too, (it's free!) in iTunes or in Zune.

Nov.16: Good Ol' Boyd
[Update 11/17: New link and show audio fixed -sf]

At 77, William S. Boyd could just sit back, count his money and let his children carry on his family’s casino and philanthropic legacies in Nevada. But for Boyd, retirement from running the company means being active in it in other ways, and he remains very much involved in the important decisions of Boyd Gaming. Mr. Boyd speaks to Steve this hour about halting construction of Echelon, making a play for the properties of bankrupt rival Station Casinos and old versus new Vegas.

In banter: Frank Caliendo opens, Steve bets on Cotto for a friend, WSOP ratings are flat, the Rio is NOT all suites, three popular attractions are now neighbors, crazy Bette fans attack and Jim Murren claims he listens to this show.

Links to stuff discussed:

Steve’s blog post and column on the Main Street Station walkabout
Frank Caliendo’s home page
The VegasHappensHere.Com explanation of how the MJ money was spent
Steve’s Bette Midler failure column and WSOP’s ratings drop
The new locations for the Gambler’s Book Shop and Pinball Hall of Fame
See the weird Aubrey O’Day YouTube rant after the first Peepshow performance
The VegasHappensHere.Com rant against the wrap on The Harmon
The first CityCenter pictorial on the blog
The latest from the R-J’s Howard Stutz on the Boyd-Station tussle
The Dave Berns chat on KNPR with Bob Arum about maybe-gay UFC

LVW Col: My 10 Favorite Shows

Here's this week's "Strip Sense" column in the Las Vegas Weekly. Agree or disagree in the comments section or e-mail me your lists! -sf

Ten Shows You Absolutely Have To See...
...or send visitors to see

By STEVE FRIESS

"All right, very quickly, before we go, Steve Friess,” KNPR’s Dave Berns intoned in his dulcet voice, “one entertainment tip you have right now. Something you’ve seen recently on the Strip or off the Strip that you think people should go to?”

On that particular day last week, I blurted out Jersey Boys, because at the moment, I’m a little obsessed with the show. But that was a quick-fire answer to a question that seems simple and is, in fact, quite complex.

I get this question a lot. I get it from Facebook friends when they’re about to visit, you readers ask about once a week by e-mail, and it comes up often among colleagues over drinks at media events.

Well, the next time someone asks, I can just forward them the link to this here article. Granted, the list below will change; three shows that would’ve been on the list a year ago—The Red Piano, Mamma Mia! and Stomp Out Loud—are gone. If Peepshow jells well and Terry Fator forsakes the unnecessary political snark that was present when the show opened, both are serious candidates down the line.

Every selection here has one thing in common: If a friend called asking me to go with them to see any of these, I’d go, assuming (a) I wasn’t busy or (b) no new episode of Lost or Mad Men was on.

See the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

ELECTION: P-Ho's Brilliant Idea, Geo Wallace's Illegal One

UPDATE: GEORGE WALLACE'S FOLKS CALLED. PER FEDERAL ELECTION LAW, ANYONE CAN GO TO THE BOX OFFICE FOR A FREE TICKET. TRYING TO GET MORE DETAILS.

(Update: It's been brought to my attention that George Wallace did announce his ticket giveaway during early voting. OK. But it's still, evidently, against federal law.)

The Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood will air CNN's live Election Night coverage starting at 3 p.m. PT on Tuesday on the 130-by-40-foot LED video screen outside the mall. There'll be full sound, too.

As a journalist about to plunge into coverage of this election for three different national outlets, I cannot overstate how smart this is. Does it even matter if many tourists on the Strip will be riveted? They probably will be, but who cares? The worldwide media will be seeking an unusual visual, of course. What could convey the importance and worldwide obsession with this news event quite like the notion that it has swept up even the most unserious people on Earth, vacationers on the Strip in Sin City? I predict Planet Ho should get quite a lot of what they call in the business "impressions" from this entirely free move.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, Flamingo comic George Wallace announced today he's giving away one free ticket to his show to each person who brings in an "I Voted" sticker to the box office by Nov. 11. That sounds like a nice idea, except for two things. First, Starbucks just abandoned its plan to give away free tall coffee to just voters on Election Day because of fears that that could be in violation of federal election law because it's illegal to reward people with stuff for voting. Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil issued a statement tonight that said: “To ensure we are in compliance with election law, we are extending our offer to all customers who request a tall brewed coffee." So free coffee for everyone, folks!

But the other reason why Wallace's idea is just a cheap promotional stunt: He announced it today instead of, say, two weeks ago. In Clark County, 53 percent of eligible voters have already voted. Only 80 percent are expected, so about two-thirds of those planning to vote are done. And very few of them still have their "I Voted" stickers. Fewer still are the tourists who will bring theirs from points unknown. I'm betting that fewer than a dozen people, if that, take him up on this offer.

P.S. I'm scheduled to be Dave Berns' guest on KNPR at about 10 a.m. PT Tuesday for a little while talking about what I'm finding at the polls, so you can listen live at knpr.org. I'll also be Twittering throughout the day, but may not be able to blog. My Twitter updates appear to your left on this blog, in case you haven't noticed that before.

Richardson Screws It Up -- Again.

I don't usually deal with issues this off-topic on this blog, but I feel the need this time because I'm so amazed at the hamhandedness at work here.

Gov. Bill Richardson will be in Vegas tomorrow. He's mixing his public appearances with an inexplicably private meeting at the Las Vegas Gay and Lesbian Community Center with a collection of handpicked gays and lesbians. This is supposed to be the event that will help him "make up" to our gays after he screwed himself earlier this month by telling Melissa Etheridge in the first-ever televised gay-issues forum that being gay is a choice. Since his campaign hinges on a decent showing in Nevada early in the process, the fact that he alienated an important Democratic voting bloc - and their friends - is of critical concern.

This event actually was my idea to begin with, but it's being executed in such a pathetic manner that it actually makes the whole thing worse. The morning after that debate, I suggested something like this to both Richardson's openly gay Nevada staffer and a gay Vegas friend who was being asked by the campaign how to fix the damage. I'm not generally in the business of giving out political advice to candidates, but these friends of mine were posing the question to me of what he could possibly do to alter his tattered image with gays. I went on to write a piece in the Las Vegas Weekly this week that argued this point as well.

Rather than such a grand gesture, the immediate response the day after the debate from the Richardson camp was to have the guv call up handpicked gays -- high-profile bloggers and potential donors, mostly -- to apologize to them for his debate answer. None of this did any good in terms of tackling the real problem, which was that it was the image of him looking dour and irritable amongst the gays on that TV show that made his "choice" comments hurt him so much. It was the visual that harmed him far more than the remarks.

The real solution, it seemed to me, would be to put Richardson out in public in front of a diverse crowd of gays and answer their questions. He had screwed up on national TV; he can't fix it in private. If he wanted to make amends to the Vegas gays, he needed to come to them.

Instead, his camp decided to choose a "special" group of gays, do it at the Center as I imagined but close it to the public. That's what's up tomorrow.

I was invited to this meeting but was told I'd not be able to write about it if I attended. I didn't see the point of that, so I declined. When I asked why it was closed, among the answers I got was that some of the "participants" wanted it that way.

That's just weird, bordering on a lie.

Beyond the fact that they're not opening the thing up to all comers, they're saying they can't even find a group of gay people in Vegas who aren't embarrassed to be in the news? Or who aren't in politically sensitive circumstances -- declared supporters of other campaigns, I imagine -- that their presence at a coffee with Richardson would cause them discomfort?

That can't be it. Obviously, they don't trust their own candidate not to step in it again in public with the gays. That's why he only talks to special gays in special circumstances. I've heard the argument, too, that the campaign wants it closed so those present "feel free to speak their minds." Open it to the public and be assured some who show up will feel completely comfortable "speaking their minds."

I was also told that the governor wants this to be a "conversation." Huh? This isn't the queer re-education of Bill Richardson. He's not like George W. Bush in 2000, when the Texas guv met with the Log Cabin Republicans in private and listened for his first time to gay sob stories. Richardson already "gets it" with the gays. He knows many. His record shows he's the furthest thing from a homophobe and, intellectually, his uncertainty as to whether being gay is a choice is, if more eloquently delivered, the true answer. Science hasn't determined that yet. I believe it from my own experience, but is there an irrefutable body of evidence? No.

This is my political analysis: If this campaign really wants to make an honest attempt to repair this damage, they'll have to take a risk. They have to put this man who believes he should be president of the United States out there in public with the gays he offended and show everyone he can take the heat and is earnest about his contrition. If he does that well, he gets a photo op that may help erase the image of himself looking unhappy and crabby at the TV forum, not to mention he helps bring some attention to a Vegas gay center so underfunded that KNPR's Dave Berns asked me on the air last week whether it was a secret that it exists.

If Richardson can't do that, he has no business being president anyway.

Radio Daze Tomorrow

Tomorrow morning is busy for my vocal chords.

Most importantly, I'm scheduled to appear on KNPR (88.9 FM) with Dave Berns on his State of Nevada show live at 10 a.m. PT and then rebroadcast at 8 p.m. PT. I believe all of it is live-streamed on KNPR.org. Topic du jour is my book, "Gay Vegas." You might've heard me mention it here or there.

But first...After we record "The Strip" tonight, I've got to get to bed early tonight because I'm due to appear on a morning drive-time talk show in Baltimore on WWLG, 1370 AM, at the ungodly hour of 5:40 a.m. PT to chat with host Michael Gabel about the piece on placenta-munching I did for USA Today in July. So if any of you out there are in that area at 8:40 a.m., tune in. I'll be on for about five minutes, which is about how long it takes us on "The Strip" just to give out our contact info. Let's see if this is an ew-how-gross conversation or a isnt-this-curious one? I admit, I've blogged and written both ways on the matter. I can't imagine a radio host will be able to resist mock-vomiting.