Las Vegas Sun v. Reader Nastygrams: Duh, Winning

It's become so routine in recent weeks to take stock of yet another major laurel for the Las Vegas Sun's "Do No Harm" series led by Marshall Allen and Alex Richards, and this weekend they netted yet another triumph en route to becoming the favorite for the paper's second Pulitzer in three years. So congrats to all involved yet again for winning Best of Show at the National Headliners Awards in Atlantic City. Nicely done.

But the more interesting development from the NHA honors over the weekend was first-place recognition of the LasVegasSun.Com for "journalistic innovation" for "Attempting to Elevate Online Commentary." Here is how the Sun itself described what it's done:

In winning the innovation award, the Sun was recognized for successfully tackling a problem that has bedeviled online journalism ever since the door was opened for readers to comment about stories. The practice has frequently devolved into vitriolic exchanges among readers hiding behind anonymous handles.

The Sun instituted a two-tiered reader comment system, allowing those who prove their identity and register on the site to comment on stories. Those comments remain permanently attached to the story after it is archived.

Other comments, by unregistered readers, are attached to the story but can only be viewed by linking to them on a separate page, and are removed after 72 hours.

That's pretty interesting. Anyone in the media biz knows that reader comments can be useful and enlightening but that unrestrained anonymous blather is counterproductive and cowardly. Back when AOL News decided to freeze all comments for a while as they tried to figure out how to tame this beast, I received countless angry emails -- almost all anonymous, of course -- saying someone had robbed them of their Constitutionally protected right to free speech. Most sites, including AOL, have reverted to allowing someone else to verify the poster's identity via an AOL or Facebook account, for instance, but that's easy to game, too.


Of course, this problem isn't new and it's not restricted to the Web. It's just that because the Internet has made it so much easier, the lunatic letters have completely lost their charm.

Charm? Well, sure. Pretty much every reporter with a sense of humor who has worked for a while has a classic nastygram tacked to their cubicle wall from a completely unhinged reader. Back when it took real effort to do so, there was a peculiar respect owed to whoever did it. Also, it's hilarious how self-important, arrogant and petty people can be when you don't actually have to interact with them.

It still happens, of course, which is why the Las Vegas Weekly ran in print this image of a wonderful bit of prose from "Sucker's Advocate" that came in on a quaint ol' postcard -- Constitutional rights fully intact! -- to editor Ken Miller:


Ken is my editor, by the by. And while this is a fun one, it's not nearly as directly insulting to Ken himself as my all-time classic. It came 12 years ago, also by postcard, when I was covering the county commission for the Review-Journal. It was in response to this hard-hitting piece on the opening of one of the first of those oxygen bars. Yes, this is the stuff that got someone fired up enough to do this:


Frown face!

Now, had this been posted in the comments section of a website, I probably never would have noticed it. Instead, it's always on my desk along with my other favorite keepsakes such as these:


OK, time to do some paying work. Happy Monday and congrats again to the Sun peeps.

Wednesday Funnies

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK! RUN AWAY!!!

I do so love the weekly R-J neighborhood section The View, especially their bizarro approach to health coverage. (Remember this terrifying headline, re: brain cancer and headaches?) This is the art above a piece that questions whether digital rectal prostate exams are helpful. (Wasn't that a clinical way of putting it?) Just LOOK at this glee in this guy's eyes! I'm hopeful those plaques behind him are just props! The best part is that the first paragraph of the piece decries how "thick-headed" men are about going to the doctor for these exams!

I thought I'd lighten up the mid-week mood around here by trotting out the oddities and amusements I collect. Like, for instance, this was sent in from reader Joey R. in New Orleans from a gay dating website.


He wanted to know how many 9-foot guys were signing up. I just wonder if any of them get dates. Lord knows if there were 9-foot gay guys out there, the NBA would be a pride parade.

To answer my own question from last week, no, AT&T cell service was still miserable at Aria when I was trying to cover the president's visit there. And it got to me right when I spotted compromised TV journalist Nina Radetich, whose nickname now is "Nina Lies At 11." She was there in the light of day covering Obama, so I tried to Tweet a photo with a little snark. But it took KLAS's @JonHumbert to look carefully enough to see WHAT I was trying to Tweet:


Speaking of the Obama visit, I was on the job for AOL News. It's a news website. So what choice was I supposed to select on the White House's credentials form?


And since I've been banging around the R-J plenty lately, I found this kinda fun. The Society of Professional Journalists is having its 2010 nation confab here. And look at the speaker getting top billing:


Perhaps the Greenspun Media Group's web guru will talk about how deliberately infusing newsrooms with hubris and conflict is a great way to undermine your operations and waste tons of money?

Finally, this is just weird, funny and bad journalism all in one! Last week, the R-J did a piece about all the little things that cities have had to cut in these tough economic times. And here were the first two paragraphs:

If you want to know how deep local governments must dig for ways to cut costs these days, go ask the folks at the Henderson Senior Center.

Better ask them soon, though, before they get tired and cranky.

Uh wow. Let's stereotype and insult some oldsters! They only account for, oh, 80 percent of our readership! Woo hoo!

LasVegasSun.Com's Arsenal Gets Even Better

Wow. I know that Review-Journal publisher Sherm Frederick thinks that the gorgeous web operation for the Las Vegas Sun is a silly waste of money and puzzles as to why the Greenspuns are pouring so much money into an operation that actually has lower traffic now than before it launched its sensational redesign. High quality and industry respect -- LasVegasSun.com was named best newspaper website for a site of fewer than 1 million unique visitors a month earlier this month by trade publication Editor & Publisher -- are nice, Sherm might say, but what's the point if the eyeballs aren't looking your way?

It's not an unreasonable argument. It's just a short-sighted one. And as someone rooting intensely for the Sun's efforts to reward those who have risked so much and worked so hard for it, two recent developments are worth noting:

1. UNBELIEVABLE NEW CONTENT. Folks, you've gotta check this out. The LasVegasSun.Com now has this interactive historical map of the Vegas regionwhere you pick the date and it will show you, say, the Strip as it was at that time. Each resort or place is clickable and provides history. And there's so much more here, including an expertly produced, TV-quality 11-part decade-by-decade documentary about Las Vegas, implosion videos, hundreds of old Sun stories from the archives that illustrate various historical moments and audio testimonials from the likes of the late Benny Binion and late Sam Boyd. The depth of this feature is breathtaking, with more promised to come. Make some time to play around with it.

2. EVEN MORE TOP-SHELF TALENT. Rob Curley, the vice president for product development at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, long regarded as the industry's leading Web news-site visionary, is leaving those environs for the LasVegasSun.Com. Read this wonderful piece on him from Fast Company. On his own blog on Saturday, Curley wrote that the Sun is "easily one of the most interesting local media operations in the nation." For a city where no newspaper has ever even come close to winning a Pulitzer, that's pretty exciting. Curley pointed out Greenspun's vast influence in a long list of different media products, including the Las Vegas Weekly (where I have a column, of course) and Las Vegas One.

I don't know what the Greenspuns have in mind as they pour all these resources into these operations. Maybe they just want to serve the community with quality news and information services, as they've been doing at a hefty financial loss for decades? Nobody has ever accused the Greenspuns of being totally selfless, but this is a family of billionaires who didn't get that way by making bad business decisions. They can't be losing money by accident.

I can't answer that. But I can express some gratitude for it. I love the Internet as much as I love great journalism and I appreciate the effort to make the experience as cutting edge, informative and smart as the technology allows. So while the Review-Journal's visually miserable site has finally discovered blogs (and acts like it's some wild, wacky new frontier) but still hasn't heard of RSS feeds or indexing those blogs on Google's Blogsearch, the Sun is dazzling the entire industry.

Somewhere in some dark, sad corner on Bonanza Road, Sherm is cackling "Fools!" as he counts his money. Somewhere, no doubt, without wi-fi.