Bob Whitby
Senior Writer
Contact: 868-4521 • Email
The veteran journalist has been working for newspapers since age 11 when he got his first job as a delivery executive for the San Jose Mercury News in Saratoga, Calif. He has put in stints writing for and editing papers in Texas, Wisconsin and Florida, most recently as editor of Orlando Weekly. He has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of South Florida, and once snuck into Cuba to chronicle the recovery of a stolen boat.
Recent Articles
Better Days?
February 16th, 2012
Gov. Brian Sandoval’s plan will establish and fund regional development authorities to do most of the heavy lifting, and it emphasizes high-paying jobs, global export, technology and clean energy. And it’s surprisingly evocative for a government tome, almost New Deal-ish in its sweeping references to our collective well-being.
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Traveling Light
February 9th, 2012
There’s a service in town called Bags to Go (BaggageCheckIn.com) that, for the very reasonable price of $10 per bag, will transport your luggage from your hotel to McCarran International Airport and run it through security for you.
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A Raucous Caucus
February 2nd, 2012
Then there’s the caucus system itself, which Nevada can’t quite seem to master. In 2008, the Republican contest turned into a chaotic mess of long lines and voter confusion. The Democrats didn’t do any better: Hillary Clinton supporters sued the Democratic Party to prevent caucus meetings at Strip hotels, fearing that the location would be a boost to Barack Obama. This year, things may get even weirder.
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Vegas Velocity
February 2nd, 2012
Dream Racing is open for business at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, joining companies that will put you in the driver’s seat of NASCAR racers, street-legal exotics and drifting cars. While there are other outlets where you can indulge those particular fantasies, Dream Racing is the only place in the world for laymen to buy time behind the wheel of a Ferrari F430 GT, a 2,700-pound, $250,000 purebred racing machine.
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Radio Nowhere, Now on Sale
January 26th, 2012
Anyone can podcast; only the media elite get to broadcast. If you’ve dreamed of being the next Rush Limbaugh but had trouble attracting an audience amid the cacophony of the Internet, here’s your chance to send wisdom rolling over the airwaves of Southern Nevada, from North Las Vegas to Mesquite. KXLI, a 100,000-watt commercial radio station at 94.5-FM, is up for sale on eBay.
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Aimee Riley
The Activist
January 26th, 2012
Smoking is a professional interest for Riley, 32, a community educator for the American Lung Association. That’s in addition to her three other jobs: full-time communications major working to maintain a 4.0 GPA at the College of Southern Nevada, activist on voting rights and education issues, and mother of two.
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Shawn Gerstenberger
The Mussel Man
January 26th, 2012
You may know UNLV’s Shawn Gerstenberger from such public-health hits as high levels of mercury in canned tuna, lead in hot sauce and unsafe toys in day-care centers. He has built a department and a career making our part of the world healthier. There was no School of Community Health Sciences before he started it in 2004. “We put this beast together,” says the 43-year-old Wisconsin native. “We went from nobody to 17 faculty and 250 grad students. It has really blown up.”
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A Former Subject of the King
January 19th, 2012
When The Lion King closed at Mandalay Bay in December, about 50 actors lost their jobs. That’s showbiz, and performers accept employment instability as part of the gig. They’ll move on to other productions, here or elsewhere, on other stages. But there are others in supporting roles who are also now out of work—longtime Las Vegas residents for whom the end of a run means changing jobs if they’re lucky or the unemployment line if they’re not.
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Go Tell It on the Mountain
In the California desert, Salvation Mountain has a storied past. Now its future is in question.
January 19th, 2012
In 2007, Leonard Knight made a cameo appearance in the film Into the Wild playing himself, the bug-eyed, sun-ripened, white-haired, contagiously enthusiastic then-76-year-old builder of Salvation Mountain in Niland, Calif. Brief as Knight’s film career was—he only had a few lines—it neatly captured his open, earnest nature, and introduced the world to the cartoonishly colorful monument to everlasting love he’d been building, by himself, for 23 years out in the desert.
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Hands Off My Bike!
January 12th, 2012
As of Jan. 12, Las Vegas becomes the temporary center of the classic-motorcycle universe when three—count ’em, three—auctions roll into town: the Las Vegas Premier Motorcycle Auction at the Rio, the Las Vegas Motorcycle Sale at the Imperial Palace and the 2012 Las Vegas Motorcycle Auction at the South Point. There are bikes for sale this weekend that you’d be lucky to see in a museum, let alone get a chance to own. It’s an embarrassment of riches.
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