Media Muddle: KNPR, Bornfeld, Electric Daisy Cartoons

It's Sunday and I've got tons of writing to do, which means that I'll set it aside as usual to muse. Loads and loads of stuff:

* We expect our media critics to be forthright. But on Thursday, when Steve Bornfeld of the Review-Journal announced the end of his Mediaology column, which analyzed the local TV news universe, he did so with this bizarre and ridiculous statement:

[T]he issues [this column] addresses are finite. Believing they're infinite would result in increasingly strident, repetitive columns. Readers and TV pros deserve better.

Uh, what? He's run out of news? Can you imagine if Norm Clarke said, "You know, every original celebrity scandal that's ever happened has happened, so I don't want to bore you all anymore. Bye!" Or if Jon Ralston said, "These elections are so frigging repetitive. Someone wins, someone loses, people get mean, people lie. How boring. I'm done!" Or maybe Howard Stutz might perk up one day and say, "The earnings go up, the earnings go down, they keep having these poker tournaments, so what, we've got the gaming thing fully covered. Let's move on, shall we?"

The TV news business is a perpetual news machine of its own. The personalities, decisions and circumstances -- especially in a rapidly changing era of media -- present endless stories, reasons to opine, worthwhile topics to delve into and important matters to continue to explain to readers/viewers about how and why the news as it is. Every time a major story breaks, someone independent ought to assess how it was managed by the medium that still provides the most information to the most numbers of people. There is so much wrong with local TV news it makes my head explode, and Bornfeld barely scratched the surface. Yet after just three years, Bornfeld can't come up with anything more to say? What?

Nope, not buying it. Something else is happening here. Maybe he's personally just tired of doing it, which is fine but don't pretend like the entire pursuit is no longer worthy or valuable. Maybe the newspaper decided the space could be better used for more advice columns and puzzles, which we'll find out soon enough. Maybe, having fired staffer Corey Levitan, the Features Section decided they needed Bornfeld to pick up slack elsewhere, and the one thing that needed to go before he snapped was this. But to say, "Hey, we did it all! Nothing left to see!" is inane and disingenuous. Any journalist with that little creativity should leave the business altogether, and I don't believe Bornfeld is that guy. Yet since he's writing a column about the MEDIA BUSINESS in which he has certainly advocated transparency, this dud of a swan song is especially pathetic.

[Disclosure: I generally do not comment on the local TV news biz because my partner is an executive at KSNV, Channel 3, so it's awkward and compromising. While some suggest I have a bias in my print-media commentary toward Greenspun Media because I write a column for GMG's Las Vegas Weekly, I suspect the likes of Ralston, Joe Schoenmann, Robin Leach, Delen Goldberg, David McGrath Schwartz, John Katsilometes and others would agree I haven't laid off on GMG when the spirit moves me.]

* Speaking of the TV, I was on it on Friday with KSNV's Jim Snyder discussing the hullabaloo surrounding the Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Here's my part:

So far, so good with EDC, by the by. No serious injuries or hospitalizations to speak of.

* Tangentially, I was fascinated to find this cartoon about the EDC on the R-J's editorial page:


(It's four frames, so I've excerpted it for the purposes of illustration as I didn't want to be sued for providing the whole thing.)

It's worth noting because at first I thought this meant that Las Vegas jitters over EDC had scored so high on the national radar that a political cartoonist had opted to make fun of it. And not just any, but Ted Rall, a nationally syndicated cartoonist who is presently the president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. He's also an award-winning columnist.

So I looked around online to find the cartoon and see where else it had run. I couldn't find it. So I went back to look more closely and I found this...


...in between panels. Which means the R-J had commissioned Rall to draw this specifically for the newspaper. I had reported a few months ago that the R-J had fired its longtime political cartoonist, Jim Day, and bemoaned the expected lack of cartoons commenting on local issues since then. So I'm fascinated by the notion that the R-J is evidently paying syndicated cartoonists -- and very prominent ones -- from outside the city to do Vegas-related work.

* In today's column, Greenspun Publisher Brian Greenspun says out loud what I've been saying for years regarding why the Las Vegas Sun faced its massive layoffs and suffered such internal strife. You'll recall that I criticized a Las Vegas CityLife cover story by Amy Kingsley that basically suggested the paper's woes were brought on by internal conflicts between the print and online sides and suggested that it was the company's money-bleeding -- perhaps because of a failed online strategy -- that led to workforce reductions.

I argued -- and then-publisher Geoff Schumacher slapped back harsh at me -- that Kingsley's piece missed the point, failed to take into account the entire situation and was ultimately a failure. To respond to Schumacher, who felt the story was just dandy as it was, I wrote:

Kingsley's piece makes many assumptions about why Greenspun Media Group hit its rocky shoal, all of them focusing on journalism. Schumacher does the same. What Kingsley overlooked and Schumacher forgets is that the Sun has never been a profitable publication, not when Hank Greenspun started it and probably not for the vast majority of its life including recent years. And definitely not when they won their Pulitzer.

The Las Vegas Sun and most of the GMG publications have been propped up for all this time by the Greenspun family fortune. It is only because THAT has faltered that suddenly economic realities have hit them. Sure, 702.tv was an abject failure and yes, there are disgruntled people, but the Greenspuns are heavily invested in THREE businesses that have fallen apart right when Curley & Co were trying to make their big splash: Real estate (American Pacific), gaming (Station Casinos) and media (Tribune Co as well as GMG publications).

In today's column, Greenspun praises George Maloof for sticking with The Palms and not declaring bankruptcy or using the other easier ways to reorganize and paper over his business problems. Along the way, he tossed in this nugget:

By way of full disclosure, my family has not escaped the bludgeoning that has been leveled without discrimination across the country. Actually, the heartache has been disproportionately felt in those areas that relied on real estate and gaming. Throw in the media collapse, and it appears that my family hit the triple jackpot.

Ta-da! THAT is why his family reduced their workforce, shut down CineVegas, rejiggered all sorts of things. Not because the guy running the online department had singlehandedly run the enterprise into the ground, as Kingsley shouted from her cover story. But because, as I said before, the losses on every front were so grave they decided they couldn't bleed THAT MUCH from their media holdings. That was the story then, and CityLife missed it.

* Two random pieces from the Sunday paper that intrigued me:

• Sonya Padgett's feature on all the folks who sell water and art on the pedestrian bridges on the Strip. People make $1,000 a day reselling bottles of water in the summer? Holy cow.
• Paul Harasim's piece on the fact that not a single Nevada pharmacy has participated in a two-year-old program that asks them to donate unused cancer medication to a pill bank for those who can't afford them.
  

* Big congrats to KNPR and its crew for the 2,000th episode Friday of the indispensable local talk program State of Nevada. Host Dave Becker had me, R-J columnist John L. Smith and frequent host Ian Mylchreest on to assess Vegas as it stands and peer into the crystal ball about what happens next. I was honored to have been asked, and you can hear that episode here.

As I left the studio, I told KNPR General Manager Flo Rogers they should re-air the very first episode of the show or put it in the podcast feed, and she told me it is available in their online archives. I believe she may be mistaken, as I went to look so I could provide the link and the earliest episode available is from Oct. 31, 2003. It's clearly not the first***, as the commentary from Robert Fielden references previous requests for feedback from listeners. It's also available only for playing on Real Player. Here's hoping that for history and curiosity's sake, they go ahead and post their first episode and make it downloadable.

***UPDATE: Flo Rogers says the 10/31/03 episode is, in fact, the first hour of State of Nevada. I haven't listened to all of it to see if that is ever acknowledged on the air, but I will do so soon.

The Vegas Media's Mobile Troubles

UPDATE: As of Friday morning, the RJ had turned off its mobile redirect function, presumably to fix it. So far, neither KSNV nor KLAS have made any changes.


So the Review-Journal now has a mobile site for smart phones in so-called "beta" form. This was as promised by Michael Hengel, the new editor, in my interview last month. Great.

Except there's one itsy bitsy problem, as Hunter Hillegas first pointed out to me and has blogged: It doesn't work.

Watch what happens. Say I see their columnist, Steve Sebelius, tweet links stories like so:


And say I am intrigued by Brian Sandoval's secret plan to raise taxes or must know whether the DoJ will indict John Ensign. I click on those links and I get...


...nothing relevant. I'm directed to the main menu for the R-J's mobile site. If you're lucky enough that the story you're after is still atop the pile, you win! If not, bummer! This also happens when you get a full story link, so it's not a function of the shortened URLs on Twitter. Try it. It's fun! And renders the mobile thing worthless.

Now, it would be all too easy to just beat up on the R-J, as Jon Ralston is congenitally inclined. But his own TV station has exactly the same problem. It's funny, too, because Ralston apologized via Twitter for a "bad link" to video of the mayoral debate he hosted yesterday...



...but it's not the link that's the problem. It's that MyNews3.Com's mobile site forces everyone on a smartphone here:


In fact, none of the Vegas MSM mobile sites work quite right. Channel 8, KLAS-TV, has the same R-J and KSNV issue where you end up here...


...rather than on the story you're seeking. In fact, Channel 8's mobile landing is so busy, you don't even see any headlines, much less the one you want to find. It's nice that you can get the "classic" version, but you still end up on the front page, not at the story someone told you on Twitter or via email was worth your attention. By the time I'm there, I don't care anymore and I leave. Fail.

KTNV is better. Someone sends you a link to a specific story and, lo and behold, you are rerouted to that story:


My problem with KTNV, however, is that you don't get a link or any obvious way of watching the report. It's on the proper website, but not readily available on the mobile version. At the very bottom, there is this...


...but if you click on video, you get the general video menu of stories. Seeing how these are TV stations, you'd think they'd want you to see the TV version of the report.

Fox 5 is the only one that doesn't have a mobile site, but at least you end up on the right page with the right story and all the rest of the content they provide including the video.

Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Sun has a problem of its own that's similar to KTNV's. Yes, you end up being re-routed to the story you're trying to find. But that's it. Yesterday, for instance, Ralston reported that Mayor Oscar Goodman had sent out a self-congratulatory and thinly veiled Carolyn campaign flier at taxpayer expense. So I go to the link on my iPhone and I see Ralston inform me in his final sentence...


...to see the mailer "at right." And I looked. All I saw was my coffee cup. It wasn't there. Granted, they have a fix for that; you can switch to the normal site and it takes you to the correct story with all the content. But why should I have to do that? Why can't I find the link to the document a journalist wants to show me wherever I land?

I haven't poked around yet in the TV stations' smart phone applications. (Neither newspaper has one yet, although Hengel made it sound like the R-J would debut its any minute now.) That's worthwhile, and I'll take a look soon.

But it's also not relevant to this topic. The idea of a mobile site is to make it easier for people to see the content they're seeking in a format conducive to the device on which they seek it. If you're not going directly to the story you want, if you can't see the video or the important illustrations and attachments that come along with it, you've failed.

Come on, guys. I'm heading outta town. Let's hope when I get where I'm going, I'll be able to keep up without having to try this hard. Or is that what you're trying to sabotage?

Why Sherm Frederick Is No Longer The Publisher of The R-J

I just made that groovy chart. Click on it to enlarge and look closer if you wish. It shows, in raw numbers, why former R-J publisher Sherman Frederick has been reduced to innocuous columnist and discredited political analyst.

The latest newspaper circulation data, produced by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, came out this past week, reporting the R-J's average circulation for the six-month period ending March 31.

The story here is in the Big Dipper segment of the graph:


See that ski-slope decline and sudden bounce-back? That represents what happened in the circulation snapshots taken in September 2009, March 2010, September 2010 and March 2011. The blue line is Sunday circulation and the red is average Monday-Friday circulation.

For some reason -- and, of course, I'll speculate in a moment -- the R-J shed a whopping 18 percent of its Sunday circulation between September 2009 and September 2010, the last full year of Sherm Frederick's reign. Of that, the paper lost a shocking 15 percent of its circulation in just six months!

The paper's Sunday number fell so low -- to 166,797 as of Sept 30, 2010 -- that I had to double and triple check it because I couldn't believe it. That's less than the weekday circulation from just six months earlier. It's a number that dropped the R-J's Sunday circulation to levels not seen since the early 1990s when, of course, this county had about half its current population.

Holy crap! Now, perhaps Sherman Frederick will blame his paper's bad skid on the freefalling economy, but the economy actually began its tailspin in 2008. Just look at what happened to the R-J's circulation between September 2007 and Sept 2009:


Now what was it that happened during that span? Why, oh, why would the circulation suddenly surge from its March 2009 to its September 2009 reporting periods? What was it? Gosh...I can't remember...


OH! That's right! Great, expensive journalism, which Sherman Frederick viewed throughout his tenure as unnecessary, led to a sudden spike in subscriptions and interest. The only way to read the Pulitzer-winning Las Vegas Sun in print is to buy it folded inside the Review-Journal. In the depths of the recession, the Sun handed the R-J a lovely bump that actually buffered it from the worst of the storm. It's hard to fathom any other explanation.

So what the hell happened to the R-J to see its circulation disastrously collapse between March and September last year? It's very, very hard to say. That really should have been a period of increased circulation and interest given that the state was engrossed in its most important and fascinating U.S. Senate battle, the Harry Reid-Sharron Angle clash. What, oh what, might have turned off readers?


Is that too simplistic an explanation? Sure. But there was some anecdotal evidence that Democrats at least were canceling subscriptions and were being encouraged to do so, to boot. I even took one to task because she also was supposed to be critiquing the paper for a liberal blog.

It may not be a coincidence that this dramatic decline took place over a summer when Sherm Frederick was going through a series of very significant health crises. But, really, he's not out there personally selling the papers to people, so what could have so, so wrong?

My recent interview with the R-J's editor, Michael Hengel, might shed some light. I had heard that there was a circulation gain coming in the latest reporting period, and Hengel confirmed that without giving specific numbers. He explained it thus:

We’ve been aggressively selling [the newspaper] and I think there wasn’t as much or as strong of an effort to sell it. You’ve got to market yourself, you’ve got to ask people to buy it.

In other words, for whatever reason, Frederick, uh, stopped marketing the newspaper. Could he have been distracted by his health? Sure. Could he have been so consumed in his political obsession that that also led him to neglect the fundamentals of his business? Sure.

Any which way, numbers are cold and unbiased. Sherm Frederick was canned in mid-November. Between Oct. 1 and March 31, Sunday circulation rebounded 14 percent and weekday circulation shot up 10.5 percent. That's gigantic, but there's no way to drill in and see if Sherm started some new initiative that bore this fruit. From what it sounds like, Hengel is saying the sales efforts began when he and new publisher Bob Brown took charge.

Frederick recently attacked me out of pretty much nowhere for having been prepared to cover the Las Vegas Sun's possible second Pulitzer in three years. (They were finalists which, had they not won in 2009, would have been the farthest any Vegas publication had ever gone.) After I non-responded, he took another stab at bolstering his devastating legacy with this malarkey:

First, I did not leave the Review-Journal in "grave jeopardy".

When I left the R-J after open heart surgery and prostate cancer surgery, the newspaper had financially survived the greatest recession (or was it a depression?) in our lifetimes. I don't take full credit for that. I had a stellar team with me. We were in as solid as a financial position as any newspaper in the country. Probably better.

Now, the fundamentals of the company may be sound, although you don't usually unceremoniously dump your top guys after decades when things are on the upswing. Either way, though, when you preside over tanking circulation of this magnitude, it's a big disingenuous to suggest you walked away with the ship sailing smoothly.

Sherm had played fast and loose with circulation figures before, as I pointed out a few years back. This, you see, is when and why he actually began despising me. He had told his Sunday readers at the time that the R-J had enjoyed a circulation increase when, in fact, the Sunday circulation for that period had fallen. It was his daily circulation that had posted a modest rise.

But let's look at the big picture again to see just how badly Frederick's tenure failed. I compiled this with the ABC data available going back to Sept. 2001, so we get a full decade to review:


The newspaper's Sunday circulation peaked, it seems, at 229,000 in March 2003. (At that time, the Sun was a full-service newspaper that was delivered in tandem with the R-J on the weekends but on weekdays was delivered in the afternoon.) After that, despite a massive economic, tourist and population boom, Sherm's R-J stagnated or steadily trickled down. There were two moments of upswing, when the Sun ceased to be a separate weekday daily in 2006, pushing a whole load of subscribers over to the R-J column, and then when the Sun got its Pulitzer. On each occasion, Sherman Frederick's R-J failed to hold on to these externally-gotten gains.

In his recent diatribe against me, Frederick suggested that my media criticism is predictable: R-J bad, Sun good. Of course, that's blatantly untrue. I believe the R-J had several tremendous reporters and writers who deserve a bigger audience, more resources and stability that comes from leadership that embraces change and new media.

So the good news is, they're on their way. The bad news, for Sad Shermy, is that the numbers don't lie and his tenure was a bust.

Monday Is Pulitzer Day!

Somewhere around noon PT on Monday, we find out if the Sun has done the improbable and won its second Pulitzer Prize in three years. Last time out, it was a surprise even to the reporter, Alexandra Berzon, who did it. This time, as I've been chronicling for months now, the "Do No Harm: Hospital Care in Las Vegas" series picked up two of the biggest pre-Pulitzer honors, Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and Best of Show at the National Headliners Awards in Atlantic City.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow, and you can find out here once it's out. Landing just one is super-impressive, but nabbing two in three years for a small entity like the Sun would be absolutely amazing. And all I know is that the health series by led by Marshall Allen and Alex Richards is in the mix. I've no idea if Jon Ralston's work as columnist is in contention -- his work in the Reid-Angle and Ensign matters would absolutely be worthy if he were at the New York Times or similar -- or Mike Smith, the cartoonist who has gone far too long without proper national recognition.

Anyhow, here's the list of those who may by this time tomorrow be able to claim a Pulitzer to their credit:


Good luck to all. Make Vegas journalism proud.

Media: Of Righthaven, Cosmo, the Sun & Me

Some stuff to take note of as I huddle behind the laptop on a rainy Friday afternoon at The Beat:

* Righthaven. Remember when a certain "media critic" suggested that the Review-Journal and Stephens Media might rein in their copyright infringement lawsuit frenzy because they dropped a few of their weakest cases around the time of their regime change? And remember when I said it wasn't so? Well, it looks like they're not only not stopping but they continue to take their direction from... me! Back on Oct. 3, I started them a list of the major media outlets ripping off their graphic for the Vdara Death Ray story. And now they've sued 10 sites over just that, although in true ham-handed Righthaven fashion they're the lightweights (without legal departments?) like Flick & Tea rather than wealthy players like Gawker.Com, Gizmodo.com or even AtlanticWire.Com, whose parent just announced a $1.8 million profit largely from its web operations. Righthaven is going after a biggie -- Drudge Report -- on behalf of the Denver Post, by the way, as the business model expands or metastasizes, depending on your point of view. This is not, of course, the first time Righthaven has pursued a mark thanks to me. Remember this lady?

* ¡Hola!, Periodista. Meanwhile, have you ever heard of...


LasVegasSol.Com? Me either until a few minutes ago when I was grabbing the above links. Turns out, it's the LasVegasSun.Com, only in March 2009 they also started using LasVegasSol.Com. It appears that any URL from the Sun can be swapped with its Spanish URL counterpart. I just can't figure out why. It's not as though they have a Spanish-language mirror site that I can find. Baffling. Also, you know what they don't own, but which would actually make a lot of Vegas sense?


* Cosmo Crapola: I've dialed back my critique of specific reporters lately because I know I come off as shrill and arrogant. It's not easy to strike that balance, particularly in a thin-skinned city where even epically insecure powerhouses who dish out incessant attacks on people take criticism very personally. But today I need to take aim directly at recently installed R-J gaming reporter Chris Sieroty over this travesty:


It's a second-day reaction story after Cosmopolitan's Wednesday opening. Yesterday, I lamented the rah-rah headline declaring the opening "smooth" when there were many, many reports of significant problems. That was bad, but this is simply unforgivable because by the second day, there's no excuse to not be aware of -- and challenge Cosmo brass -- about widespread reports of snafus.

Sieroty opens his piece: "Analysts, casino executives and politicians emerged from opening night ... with generally positive impressions... ." Notice anyone missing from his laundry list? Like, uh, people who stayed at the fucking place? Customers? It was not difficult to find blog and Twitter traffic about delayed rooms, technology outages, slow restaurant service, people locked in stairwells and much more.

This is my greatest complaint about gaming-industry journalism, that my colleagues seem uninterested in what real tourists and customers have to say. And it's never in history been easier to get that perspective, to interact with those people. Sieroty could have put out a Tweet saying, "Hey everyone, what'd you think of Cosmo? Anybody hear of problems?"

Which brings me to the other issue with this piece. His gauge for assessments of Cosmo are Oscar Goodman, Steve Wynn, Bill Lerner and David Schwartz. Dr. Dave is a serious academic and writer with no conflicts and Lerner is an analyst with some peculiar past views but both are wonks and that's fine. But Oscar Goodman would never, ever, EVER diss a new Vegas casino for any reason, no matter how hideous he believed it to be or how drunk he is. And Wynn? It's nice that Wynn was complimentary, but could Sieroty possibly be unaware that three days ago I quoted him as calling Cosmopolitan "an extraordinary example of ill-conceived plans"? Where is the journalist to chime in and note that Wynn's kudos seemed tactful and polite but the other day he said this other thing?

Please understand that I actually am quite fond of the Cosmo, and none of the problems can't be resolved over time. But it is just inaccurate to suggest this place opened flawlessly or to universal praise. And I'm hopeful that as Sieroty settles into his beat, he'll work harder to go beyond the wonks and the execs and try to give the reader a better-rounded perspective on what's happening out there from the customers, too.

* The Friesster Omnipresent. I know I'm late in writing up my views on Cosmo, but I've been a little busy. If you want to know what I think so far, I did an hour with Hunter, Dr. Dave, Jeff Simpson and Chuck Monster yesterday all about Cosmo for The Vegas Gang show yesterday (not posted yet, will update this when it is) and an hour today with Doug Elfman and Richard Abowitz on KNPR's State of Nevada hosted by Ian Mylchreest reflecting on the year in Vegas entertainment and tourism news this morning. You can download that already by right-clicking here. This afternoon I'll be on The Dave Scott Show, too, live on LVRocks.Com at about 4:20 p.m. today talking about Vegas-related holiday gifts and, of course, tomorrow Miles and I will do The Strip. Ther'll be another post about that shortly. Stay tuned!

Sunday Readings: Hoover, Reid-Angle, Wynn

This past week, I extensively juggled two significant stories out of Vegas, the Reid-Angle race and the opening of the Hoover Dam's bypass bridge. So which one, on this fine Sunday, did more Americans read about?

Well, lookit:


Parade Magazine, inserted into more than 30 million copies of Sunday papers and is the largest circulation magazine in the world, put the bridge on the cover. I can't say the piece is even all that great, but that's a pretty big hit for a built-within-budget $240 million public works project at a moment when public works projects and government spending in general get a pretty bad name. (See Dig, Big.)

Meanwhile, a few other things from the Sunday papers:

* Reid-Angle Ugly. I must agree with CityLife editor Steve Sebelius' assessments on Twitter of Laura Myers' strange side-by-side profiles of Harry Reid and Sharron Angle. As Sebelius notes, the opening anecdote of the one on Reid is about 30-year-old, unproven claims of Mob dealings while the opening for Angle's was all about her scrappy, up-from-the-bootstraps early life. By the time you finish both pieces, you probably have a reasonably well-rounded perspective on both people, but given that most people don't go much farther than the headline and first 300 or 400 words if that, it's weird. And, as Sebelius also said, the contrasting headlines -- referring to Reid as a focus-group-hated "career politician" and Angle as a focus-group-loved "political outsider" -- was disturbing and noticeable. Still, it is also worth noting that Sun publisher Brian Greenspun put yet another essay about Reid's greatness on the front of his newspaper without any disclosure that his family has given about $370,000 to federal Democrats since 2006. It just goes back to what I've been saying over and over again, that the R-J deserves its lumps for a lot of its Reid-Angle approach, but so does the Sun. And nobody else in the mainstream media seems to wants to point out that both are flawed in very similar ways. And, yes, that also includes the Sun's story placement and the tone of its political reporting.

* And Another R-J Thing. The state's paper of record never bothered to do any significant fact-checking of the claims made during Thursday's debate. That's shameful, an abdication of one of the paper's most significant roles.

* Reid-Angle National. There were two interesting columns about or involving the Senate race in today's Sun, one by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times and one by David Broder of the Washington Post. Each chose to shorthand the race in colorful ways. Dowd called it a battle between "the former boxer and the former competitive weightlifter," which sent me to look up that, yep, the 61-year-old marm was once a weightlifter and made me wonder why nobody else really has put that specific contrast to work. Broder, meanwhile, referred to the debate as a "contrast between the unacceptable and the profoundly uncomfortable" without actually specifying who was who. (Given that Broder's a liberal, I assume Angle's the "unacceptable.")

* Now I Get It. Howard Stutz does a pretty good job today of giving perspective on the confusing financial casino dealings of late and what it means. It helped me keep it all straight, anyway.

* Krolicki Love. I'm intrigued that incumbent Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki has somehow become the Republican who the left-leaning media can love. Or the Republican they can endorse to prove they're not completely in the Democrats' pocket. Today, the Las Vegas Sun endorsed him, a week after the consortium of gay publications did so as well. Perhaps it's because the lieutenant governorship has no power? Does anyone seriously think either of these groups would be writing such kindnesses of him if he had run against Reid for Senate, as he was expected to until he was sidelined by a fairly specious, now-dismissed indictment?

* Wynn's Villa Extravaganza: If you're curious what Steve Wynn's home at the Wynn looks like, head to Architectural Digest to see the slideshow. The article is a little strange, though: the Golden Nugget was not a 1990s Wynn creation, Parry Thomas was not a lawyer and there's nothing new about the fact that Wynn has an Ivy League education or waxes eloquent about the Precambian explosion. Still, the pictures are cool.

On Debate Day: Daily Beast, PBS & Ralston

Tonight's the big debate between Sharron Angle and Harry Reid, so the national media is descending and CSPAN will broadcast it. I'll be covering it for Politics Daily, so keep watch for that.

A few random thoughts before I plunge into a marathon writing day:

* My in-depth look at Harry Reid and the race is up on The Daily Beast, the product of interviews with more than a dozen former Reid staffers as well as a long list of Nevada politicos and even a current John Ensign staffer. There are plenty of interesting bits in here including Steve Wynn talking about being torn over Reid's support of the Obama agenda and U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley recalling how Reid predicted more than a year ago that Sharron Angle would be his opponent.

* I know Vegas PBS' Mitch Fox will do an able job, but it is interesting that last night's Senate debate between Christine O'Donnell and Chris Coons in Delaware was on CNN and co-moderated by Wolf Blitzer and Mitch Fox's Delaware counterpart in public TV. Which race, really, is nationally more important and closer?

* I got quite a giggle out of Jon Ralston this morning delusionally believing he was pointing out to the descending national media some sort of proof that the Review-Journal's news coverage of the Angle-Reid race is hopelessly tainted. I agree there have been some very sad low points, but what he showed everyone was an adequate, standard-issue story on a new poll showing Angle up by two points and up 4 from her last showing. He wrote:

"You have to read the piece to see how tendentious the paper is: Release poll earlier than usual (usually on Fridays or Saturdays), have it written as if reflective of surge and play HUGE."

The trouble is, the R-J played this, ran this and wrote this precisely as pretty much any major newspaper would. Following the horse-race of polling as if it is actual news is bullshit, but it's how everyone does it nowadays, and a four-point increase in Angle's support in a race this tight absolutely would qualify by any poll-obsessed journalist's measure as a surge or a bump. Also, while Ralston claims the R-J article he is showing the world is clearly slanted towards Angle, the quote from the R-J's own pollster is: "I wouldn't call it momentum...". So they're NOT suggesting that she's got some huge wind on her back.

The other problem with Ralston's R-J tantrum today is that, as usual, he has no interest in taking note of the blatant conflicts of his own newspaper and TV station. His bosses have combined for nearly $600,000 in donations to Democrats since 2006 while the R-J's publisher has given nothing to anyone.

And today's Las Vegas Sun is a terrific example of how much more open and obvious Ralston's publishing home is about its support for Harry Reid: Their top news story? "Train project a priority for Reid." Yup, a news story that could be run any day of the week -- the Sun's content does not need to be dictated by when Reid chooses to have a press conference -- but is nonetheless atop the fold today of all days. Why, Jon? Oh, that's right. To remind everyone of Reid's juice, the potential for pork and, probably, the notion that Sharron Angle wouldn't be able to or want to do that.

What Ralston actually did today with his email attack on the R-J was ensure that the national media who pay attention to his political expertise will ignore his droning about his competing paper from now on. There's nobody who matters who actually believes Jon Ralston is an objective or fair arbiter of the attributes of either newspaper anymore than anyone believes that Harry Reid is an objective or fair arbiter of the attributes of Sharron Angle.

The RJ, The Sun and The Angle Tape

Today may very well be the day that the Review-Journal's credibility in covering the Harry Reid-Sharron Angle race evaporates once and for all. As of now, there is still nothing anywhere on the R-J's website about the secret tape that the Sun's Jon Ralston landed and posted of a private meeting between GOP hopeful Sharron Angle and Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian. She had wanted to get Ashjian out of the race, concerned he could split conservative votes and cost her the race.

It's not even that the tape is all that shocking. It certainly gives the Reid folks plenty to work with, what with her hypocritically offering Ashjian to drink of her "juice" in the form of access to Sens. Jim DeMint, Mitch McConnell and Tom Coburn after beating up on Reid for all his backroom dealings. But while some are fascinated by the awkwardness that comes with Angle having scathed the Republican establishment in advance of addressing the Republican establishment on Wednesday, that's nothing new. Recall any number of interviews in which she's said the same thing, not to mention the secret tape I received and posted in August in which she also rambled on about resisting Washington's effort to co-opt her. Attacking current and recent Republicans is part of her schtick and ultimately bolsters her credibility since, even in private, she is truly dismayed by GOP spending over the past 20 years.

Yet for the Review-Journal to ignore the new tape altogether is simply journalistic malpractice. They didn't need to get something in this morning's paper -- the Sun didn't either, in fact -- but they have a website, however ridiculously arranged, and could have blogged something last night or at least by 2 p.m.4 p.m. TODAY. Has the Review-Journal simply given up on trying to cover this race as exhaustively as the public deserves and expects?

Maybe it's the childish notion that if Ralston had it the R-J can't touch it? That's certainly a game Ralston plays occasionally, but Ralston is a sole operator who has the prerogative to pick favorites. The R-J, on the other hand, is the state's largest full-service newspaper, and the paper of record must reflect that this tape has emerged and will be -- fair or not -- a potent political weapon in the weeks to come.

As blog readers know, I don't take quite the same view of the R-J as Ralston. To Jon, the paper could never and will never do anything right. I cringed last week when Ralston ranted about some cousin of the R-J-owning Stephens family who gave money to Republicans as more proof that the paper is thoroughly corrupted. Both of Ralston's bosses, KSNV owner Jim Rogers and the Greenspuns, have given and raised significantly more money to/for Democratic groups and candidates and have also made their views of the candidates exceedingly public to no criticism from Ralston. (The Greenspuns have given more than $370,000 and the Rogers family more than $200,000 to federal candidates since the 2006 cycle, almost all of it to Democrats. Frederick? $0 to anyone.)

So I disagree with Jon's overall write-off of the newspaper itself. Both publications have serious flaws and challenges, and even a recent Los Angeles Times commentary that Ralston routinely references as skewering the R-J for partisanship also contained these lines:

• The liberal Las Vegas Sun persistently finds bright spots for Reid...
• The paper (delivered inside the R-J, in a novel arrangement) sometimes seems to treat Reid as a Great Man of the Senate...
• Sun staffers winced in February when Greenspun wanted to put on the front page an editorial praising Reid...
• the Sun favors Reid

So Nevadans have it rough finding a media source that comes close to providing even a perception of earnest objectivity or fairness. And I'll continue to argue that overall the R-J does a fairly good job of covering the general news and a very fair job of presenting national and international news stories. Also, it's website is inane.

What I probably can never do again, however, is praise the R-J for its coverage of the most important state election in Nevada history. I don't know if it's partisanship, jealousy, laziness or incompetence that has the Review-Journal ignoring the Angle tape. And I don't care. It shouldn't matter. It's a disgrace any which way.

The Sun Pulls A Reid-Angle Funny

I've been under the gun and suffering bruising writer's block trying to finish a long-overdue feature that is really screwing up my schedule for the week, so I didn't even step out to pick up today's paper until now.

Too bad. I could've used this giggle from the Las Vegas Sun's corner of the R-J's front page sooner. I've actually never seen a headline quite like that in a newspaper. It's completely inappropriate, but an unexpected chuckle nonetheless.

Oh, and you'd only see it if you got the print copy of newspaper. The real story by Anjeanette Damon and Delen Goldberg, with its actual, non-April-Foolsy headline, is here.

Now back to my regularly scheduled misery.

HOLY SH*T ALERT: The R-J Sues Sharron Angle

They actually did it.

The Review-Journal's copyright-enforcing arm, Righthaven LLC, has sued their own darling candidate for Senate, Sharron Angle, just as I said they would have to on Aug 23.

The Las Vegas Sun's Steve Green reported a half-hour ago that Righthaven, on behalf of the R-J, is seeking $150,000 in damages from Angle personally and the forfeiture of her domain name, SharronAngle.Com.

What did I tell you? The fun, indeed, starts now. The campaign will have to defend itself against stealing content, which they really cannot do because contrary to what one diligent commenter on this blog suggested the last time we had this conversation, it is NOT "fair use" to say, "Here's this neat story about me!" and post the whole thing.

What's even more engrossing here is that Angle and her partisans can't complain that the R-J is biased against her, seeing how both its editor and publisher are on record as rooting really, really hard for her to take down Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In fact, this ties lefties in knots, too, as how will Erin Neff and her phony "journalism accountability project" -- the words of gay activist Rob Schlegel today at a Reid event I was covering -- fit this into their inflexible world view that the R-J is working in insidious ways to bring down the Democratic incumbent?

To be honest, I actually am shocked. When Righthaven CEO Steve Gibson talked to me that day, he refused to let me send him links of the offending material and rejected my suggestion that not suing Angle would weaken the other 100+ cases.

"There are probably millions if not billions of infringements we won't be able to address. It doesn't weaken our position at all. ... Two wrongs don't make a right. Two infringers doesn't make an innocent infringer."

Jon Ralston's TV producer, Dana Gentry, called me after the post to ask if I'd asked Gibson or Angle's folks whether the R-J had provided Angle with permission to post the stories. I hadn't asked and Gentry said she'd find out, but I got off the phone realizing that that was, indeed, a serious loophole.

Well, loophole filled in! According to the Sun's story, the lawsuit against Angle states:

“Ms. Angle did not seek permission, in any manner, to reproduce, display, or otherwise exploit the Works (stories)...Ms. Angle was not granted permission, in any manner, to reproduce, display, or otherwise exploit the works.”

Then again, one of my wise commenters here, on Facebook or on Twitter -- so hard to keep track these days -- noted that for the R-J to let her use the stories gratis would be akin to a campaign donation now that they've affixed prices to it and have become so aggressive in addressing it. There could be messy FEC issues therein for everyone involved, including the undeclared, de facto donor.

So here we are, with the only reasonable outcome given Righthaven and the R-J's posture of suing the pants off all sorts of copyright infringers. Their lawsuits are now about to get the notice not just of the journalism and technology media but also political pundits. Don't be surprised to see this image...


...in a pro-Harry Reid TV ad or mailer soon.

This situation has fascinating implications. Sure, they could settle, but the settlement money would probably have to come from campaign coffers, so we'll see it someday. If they don't settle and this goes to trial -- perhaps after Angle wins and becomes a senator -- we will be privy to the web traffic of a major-party Senate candidate's site as a matter of the public record, data that has always rightly been seen as proprietary.

Separate and apart from the question of whether the R-J, via Righthaven, can sue for damages, can they actually seize SharronAngle.Com? I mean, that's her name, her property. There's actually lots of case law -- including a successful suit by Hillary Clinton to wrest her domain name from a cybersquatter -- to show that Angle has pretty strong rights to it. It's a baffling piece of this.

Oh! And while I have your attention, the R-J also now must sue a major potential advertiser, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. I just noticed today, while researching the property for an upcoming update to the VegasMate iPhone app, this:


Click on any of those -- although we only care about the R-J items -- from this site and you DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THE ENTIRE STORY. Fair use? Not even arguable.

The Cosmo is a $4 billion resort due to open in December. That's some deep pockets there, unlike so many that the R-J has already sued! How fun it will be to see the R-J sue a company that could then choose not to dump thousands of dollars into their ad revenues this fall! But they have no choice, do they?

Any which way, grab a bowl of popcorn, dear readers. It's going to be riveting one way or the other. Yes, I support the R-J's efforts. But does that mean I can't get a kick out of how many headaches it actually causes the folks on Bonanza Road?

A Dear Jon Letter Of Sorts

I read with great interest a Columbia Journalism Review Q-and-A with Las Vegas' very own Jon Ralston. I think it's terrific that they spotlighted Jon and, as I've written many times, our state is better for his indefatigable work.

But, of course, I found one segment of it a little bit silly. And, no, it was NOT the part where he was talking about how he "and maybe one other reporter at the time, raised questions about a U.S. senator calling banks" regarding CityCenter's troubled loans. He, of course, knows that it wasn't "maybe" but, in fact, a fact and that yours truly was the very first to write about it or get reaction from MGM Whatchamacallit and Sen. Reid's office. So "maybe" was just another way to downplay someone else's work even though Ralston himself needs no puffing up. He would never let anyone else get away with such a slight if it were him, so now I've clarified that.

But then Jon gets into the conversation with CJR about whether the two newspapers in Vegas are biased towards one side or the other in the Reid-Angle Senate race.

If Ralston wants to make the case that the R-J's news coverage is biased towards Angle and other Republicans, I'm having a harder and harder time disagreeing lately. Almost every day now, there's a piece on what Sharron Angle had done or said that day, not a stitch of it actually new or different. A few examples:

• In early July when President Obama visited Vegas, R-J scribe Laura Myers wrote on the same day about a standard-issue Angle stump speech as if that constituted news or balance.
  
• The other day, Angle spoke to a Republican Men's Club and Myers' story was loaded with the same catch-phrases that Angle uses in her TV ads. It is NOT news that Sharron Angle thinks Harry Reid is a bad senator and that she'd be a better one. She doesn't get front-page treatment for saying that; she gets it if she says something newsworthy. The key word is "news" -- something we don't already know or haven't heard yet.
  
• When something actually IS newsworthy -- say, Sen. John Ensign's staffers were cleared to testify before a grand jury in his scandal's probe -- it needs better, more and more prominent coverage. The R-J gave that example these skimpy seven paragraphs and buried it somewhere deep in one of the sections.

So, yeah, I'm disappointed by the R-J. And it is totally bizarre to have editor Thomas Mitchell believing it's OK for him to post anti-Reid screeds online because "it's a blog," as he told the L.A. Times. He oversees the paper's coverage; his advocacy for or against a candidate in any medium undermines the perception of his judgment. Period.

All that said, however, the R-J does play the broader national news stories that come off the wires pretty fairly. Obama appears on the front page looking presidential on a regular basis. When historic legislation has passed, the front pages have reflected their significance.

But, OK. Ralston can make the RJ-bias argument and there's some merit to it. Trouble is, he goes on with CJR to defend the Las Vegas Sun as if it is not equally guilty from the left:

There’s no question that Brian Greenspun, who’s the head of the Sun, supports Harry Reid. But he does not have that much hands-on impact on the Sun and what it does on a day-to-day basis. Would he like to see Harry Reid win? Yes. Do people who work for the Sun know that? Yes. Does he influence day-to-day coverage? I’m not at the Sun, I can’t really speak to that, but I don’t think so. I know the political reporters and they’ve done some great coverage.

Whoa. For a journalist who makes a career pointing out the fatal flaws and cognitive dissonances of public officials' arguments, Ralston in this passage really works hard to overlook a lot of inconvenient truths. You know, like that time in February when the Sun ran a banner headline across the top of its front page shouting, "A Double Thank You, Mr. Reid." It was an advertisement for the Sun's editorial; the Review-Journal has never, ever advertised what's on its editorial pages from its front page. Ever.

But that's ancient history. The past several days offer even better examples. My favorite came Sunday. For background, you ought to know that the R-J's Myers did a blog post examining this Harry Reid ad:

Myers raised the question of whether the teacher in the ad was actually at risk of losing her job. It certainly does seem like a reasonable conclusion from the ad, no? But, in fact, this teacher probably wasn't ever in such danger.

Was it a worthwhile use of Myers' time? Doubtful. I've yet to see Myers do any coverage of inaccuracies or outright lies coming from Sharron Angle or her campaign -- for a few whoppers, check out my blog post about a recent Wall Street Journal column -- but I can't say it was a completely ridiculous thing to write about, either.

Myers' blog post, however, gave rise to one of the most bizarre, slanted political pieces I'd ever read in any serious newspaper anywhere. Under a SUNDAY FRONT PAGE headline, "R-J story critical of Harry Reid ad misses its mark," the piece by newly hired political reporter Delen Goldberg opens:

Politicians often complain about how they are characterized in the media, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s campaign is especially livid that one of its TV ads was mischaracterized and deemed inaccurate by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Well, shit! If all it takes to get on the front page of the Sun is for a Harry Reid spokesman to be "especially livid," it's going to be a long year indeed. Did the spokesman also write this silly screed, because he could not possibly have been more thrilled by it. It's complete with references to Angle as an "ultraconservative" -- that "ultra" is a judgment call that journalists ought to leave to readers -- and, in the reporter's voice, declares that the R-J made assumptions about the ad that weren't true. Watch that ad again; the conclusions were not off the wall.

Goldberg's gift to Reid included this cute bit where Reid's spokesman Jon Summers gets to give the R-J the benefit of the doubt -- that perhaps they're just incompetent, not malevolent! That's followed by a completely weird passage in which media experts chime in on the broader topic of newspapers analyzing political advertisements.

This quote was particularly strange, given the context:

“What’s really changed with the media is, we used to be able to count on newspapers to give an accurate reporting of what was really going on. They’d almost be the referee,” said Jim Spencer, president of the Campaign Network, a communication and campaign consulting company. “If someone put out an ad that was inaccurate, newspapers set the record straight. That just doesn’t go on anymore. Now newspapers say both sides have a point.”

Huh? It's BAD for newspapers to provide both sides of a story? Myers was trying to set the record straight! Can you imagine how "especially livid" Reid's camp would have been if she had, straight-up, written about how the ad was inaccurate and here's why and NOT given Summers a chance to answer to it? Myers did just that; she gave paragraphs to the same "especially livid" spokesman to voice his view. Seeing how Goldberg and the Sun clearly agree with Reid, would they have preferred that Myers not include that? Ralston himself does truthiness evaluations of TV ads on his TV show, the transcripts of which are published in the Sun -- and without such balance, which is fine by me -- so Spencer's quote is not only confusing and irrelevant but also incorrect.

I especially love this passage for its ability to make Reid's "especially livid" spokesman seem absolutely heroic:

Within an hour of the R-J story going online, Summers had fired off his rebuttal. Time was of the essence. With the Internet, Google alerts and Twitter posts, stories — even inaccurate ones — can spread like wildfire.

“You either define, or you get defined,” Summers said. “It was important to correct the record and get out our position, which wasn’t in the R-J, and serve as a reminder to other outlets that look to the R-J for story ideas to do their homework.”

Time was of the essence! That's the journalist talking there! Can't you just hear the John Barry score swelling? Can we get Kiefer Sutherland to play Summers in the movie?

Today's Sun provided yet another terrific example. Anjeanette Damon has front-pager reporting that the Reid campaign has accused Angle of "attempting to skirt tax law by paying her staff as independent contractors." What, you mean like the way Greenspun Media hires freelance columnists including, until recently, Damon herself?

The key here was this paragraph:

Although not uncommon for political candidates, the practice could raise legal issues with the IRS if she doesn't carefully follow the rules dictating when a worker can be classified as an independent contract.

OK. Then this is not a story. It's not uncommon, there is no evidence that Angle's done anything improper and the only reason it's in the paper is because Mr. Summers, who is wonderful at being "especially livid" for a living, raised it to Damon. If Angle's staff wants to report their income on their own, whose frigging business is it of anybody? But look for this misleadingly bad headline from Damon's non-story in a Reid ad soon: "Angle avoids paying taxes on payroll." Summers is having a helluva week! Maybe he's "especially gleeful" now? The Sun is so concerned about his mood, y'know!

Meanwhile, in the very same day's newspaper, there's a totally entertaining Ralston column in which he imagines Angle's ideal press conference. Every loaded question is asked by fictional reporters with different names but the same initials: RJ. When I spotted that -- it did take a few paragraphs but I was at the vet and my dogs would NOT shut the hell up -- I laughed.

But, Jon, there are plenty of examples of coverage in the Sun that leans assertively towards Reid, too. I just cited three examples. The R-J may be similarly guilty in the opposite direction, but it may just be something of a wash, which is what the L.A. Times piece on the issue to which you mentioned was actually saying.

Hopefully, Jon will come down from his own pro-Sun partisan perch and provide media analysis that is as balanced as the rest of his work or maybe just avoid the topic given the personal interests at stake. But hurry. Time is of the essence!

The Show is UP: A Vegas Favorito

Another week, another news story broken in an interview on the Strip. This time, it's Vinnie Favorito disclosing his new six-year contract extension at the Flamingo. OK, it's more fun when the performer beats the crap out of his employer, but whatever. Here goes. Subscribe (it's free!) in iTunes or in Zune. Click on the date below to make it play or right-click to save it and listen at your leisure. Enjoy!

June 7: A Vegas Favorito

Insult comic Vinnie Favorito is one of those Vegas headliners who doesn’t get a whole lot of fanfare. But he’s OK with that because his shows are doing such strong business that the Flamingo actually, recession be damned, raised his ticket price. And, as he announces for the first time this hour, Harrah’s just re-signed him this week to remain a Vegas headliner for until 2017. Favorito also talks about what other famous comics were passed over for him to get the Flamingo gig and why he’s owed a lot of money by the producers of the short-lived Real Deal show at the Venetian.

In Banter: Guest co-host Joe Brown explains his departure from Vegas and gives his five favorite Vegas shows, Puck's turn towards pizza, Paul Rodriguez fallout and more.

Links to stuff discussed:

Vinnie Favorito’s site
Tickets to Vinnie’s show at the Flamingo
Joe Brown’s magnificent Vegas souvenir shirt, shots one and two and three
Phil Laak’s marathon poker effort as covered by Steve for AOL News
Expert Bedazzler/journalist Abby Goldman’s appearance on the Petcast with her 853-year-old dog
Joe Brown’s pieces, including his hour with Celine Dion, his taking a Cher impersonator to a Cher show, Frank Marino putting him in drag, his recent Le Reve and Wayne Newton review and his one-year checkup of Criss Angel
VegasHappensHere.Com pictorial of the Encore Beach Club
About A Mountain by John D’Agata
Steve’s column from the Weekly about Paul Rodriguez’s discussion of the Trop
VegasHappensHere.Com on Wolfgang Puck’s new pizza joint
Doug Elfman’s piece on “Get Him To The Greek”
The Celine Dion “Through the Eyes of the World” DVD