The Local Newsroom
Comparison
A Tale of Two Casinos
March 24th, 2011
The Tropicana and the Sahara are a study in contrasts despite some shared history; at opposite ends of the Strip, both holdovers from the 1950s managed to survive into the 21st century. Both drifted further and further down market as they faced larger and more luxurious competitors. And, as of today, they are facing profoundly different fates. One is closing, while the other has a new lease on life. Read more »
The Latest
Scrubbed Clean
The Mob Experience offers a Hollywood version of organized crime in Vegas
March 24th, 2011
With one mob-related attraction on the Strip open and downtown’s flagship Mob Museum gearing up, this seems a city obsessed with its criminal past. New York and Chicago might have written the book on “the mob,” but Las Vegas is staking its claim on the epilogue. Read more »
Green Felt Journal
Tavern owners ponder life after football
March 24th, 2011
Should the current National Football League lockout stretch into the 2011 season—previously scheduled to begin in early September—there will be an impact on Las Vegas, even though the nearest NFL team is in Arizona. Read more »
The Law
To Sue or Not to Sue
March 24th, 2011
Post a story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal on your website and you’ll get sued. That’s what the Las Vegas law firm Righthaven says, and there’s reason to think they mean it: as of last week, Righthaven has filed some 250 lawsuits against people who posted content from the Review-Journal and the Denver Post, sites as prominent as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and as obscure as KillerFrogs.com. Read more »
Seven Steps
How to Convince the Country that It Really Does Get Cold Here
March 24th, 2011
Before I moved to Vegas, the books I read about the town painted the picture of an alcoholic Sahara Desert. Most of the year, of course, this is pretty true. But when you’ve grown used to riding out 115-degree July days, the biting winds of late March—late March!?—are disorienting at the least. Read more »
The Local Newsroom
Everywhere a (Low Tech) Sign
Why billboards in the Valley are in no hurry to go digital
February 3rd, 2011
Vince Kooch jokes that his fancy title at MGM Resorts is a bit of an overstatement. It’s a mouthful all right: executive director of corporate media and brand partnerships. The long and short of it is that Kooch scours the best media opportunities out there to expand his employer’s brand. Recently, with MGM unveiling its new M Life player loyalty program, Kooch took out three billboard ads along Interstate 15 that can be seen when heading north to Las Vegas from the California border. The string-along message is simple: “play better “ (one sign), “earn better” (next sign), “Live the M Life” (third sign). While Kooch is backing the program with plenty of support marketing, he says the signs represent a reality that both advertisers and billboard owners/managers are facing today: Low-tech is often the best tech for getting your message out. Read more »
Green Felt Journal
Station’s math: More employees mean more business
February 3rd, 2011
The local employment picture has been a dire one. In the past five years, the unemployment rate has more than tripled. That’s why a local company hiring 1,000 new employees is pretty good news. It’s particularly noteworthy when it’s in the high-profile casino sector, and even more so when it’s a company that specializes in the hard-hit locals market. Add that it’s a company that’s been driven into bankruptcy by the plummeting fortunes of the Las Vegas Valley, and it’s easy to see why Station’s big hiring push was a cause for celebration. Read more »
Politics
Over the cliff we go
February 3rd, 2011
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, an empty car pulled up to the State of the State Address in Carson City, and Gov. Brian Sandoval stepped out. Sandoval’s attempt to raze Nevada’s government and become his party’s Senate or vice-presidential nominee in 2012 or 2016 wasn’t a surprise. He didn’t rise above his campaign rhetoric, and merely sounded like a broken record of some previous governors, especially his immediate predecessor. Nevada’s economy is a shambles, and Sandoval wants streamlining and diversification. So do we all, and we have heard this song before. But other states throughout the West aren’t just talking about it; they’re doing it through partnerships between education and industries, and by combining cuts with increased taxes, knowing that gutting education won’t attract companies that need an educated work force that wants educated children. Read more »
The Local Newsroom
Please Stay on the Line
Remember pay phones? They’re still out there. You just have to know where to look.
February 3rd, 2011
The proliferation of telephones in the United States has never been greater. More than 285 million Americans, about 91 percent of the population, have mobile phones. As these numbers grow, there’s less need for pay phones. But there are still people out there who depend on pay phones for daily communication, and finding those phones is getting harder and harder to do. According to Willard R. Nichols, president of the American Public Communications Council, a national trade association that represents many of the country’s independent pay phone operators, there are more than 5,000 pay phones left in Nevada. Read more »
Politics
Forgetting our responsibilities as a republic
January 20th, 2011
The following events are related because they reflect misplaced priorities and evolving politics: • State Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, retired for health reasons. He may just be sick of his caucus, which deposed him as leader when Southern Nevada Republicans decided to punish him for endorsing Sen. Harry Reid’s re-election, because he’s saner than they are, and partly (no doubt) because Sharron Angle challenged his re-election in 2008, lost 53-47 percent and still thinks she won. • A lunatic killed at least six and shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., his apparent target, through the head. The blogosphere, including the left, focused on incendiary rhetoric from the likes of Sarah Palin and the aforementioned Angle, rather than immediately pointing out the need for gun-control legislation, which they have largely ignored as an issue in recent years. Also killed in Tucson was a federal judge, barely a year after a similar shooting in the lobby of the Lloyd George Federal Building here. Read more »
