My Point of View By Rolando Larraz

There is no need to go to the courthouse and get a copy of the lawsuit
filed by the daily Las Vegas newspaper against the daily insert within
its pages because the former Greenspun family “puppet” now working for
the daily is publishing it every day.
The daily newspaper is right when it stated that the Las Vegas Sun
publishes mainly wire service items and very little local stories.
Among other reasons the daily newspaper states in court papers that
The Sun has breached its responsibilities, failing to abide by the
requirement to “preserve high standards of newspaper quality,”
The Sun in its Sunday editorial denied that argument, proving once
again what the Las Vegas Tribune has maintained for several years—that
Brian Greenspun has been living in denial pretending to be the owner
of a daily newspaper when in reality he is the editor of a daily
insert in the local newspaper.
Both newspapers have failed the community and have become symbolic
instruments of what a real newspaper should not be; the daily has
plenty of reporters who can be producing a legitimate and readable
newspaper, but it chooses not to; The Sun could be considered taking
advantage of the twenty-year-old agreement wherein the daily would
print the insert so its owner can “play big shot,” socializing with
all his communist friends.
Every major newspaper in the country serves its community to the best
of its abilities, offering a good amount of local reporting and
articles, but that is not the case in Las Vegas. On any given day the
daily newspaper has only six local news articles and the insert is
full of wire service reprints.
The daily newspaper disrespects the community by publishing
advertising on the front page, depriving its readers of many inches of
would-be news. Also, that half a page that is published every time
they have a naive person who pays for that half-page that no one
reads, the insert is exempt of that because it does not care either
for local news or advertisements on any of its six or eight pages.
In 2005, when The Las Vegas Sun was at risk of being kicked out of an
agreement with the daily newspaper after three of the four children of
The Las Vegas Sun’s founder and editor, Hank Greenspun, were in
disagreement with the offer that the then-owners of the daily
newspaper made, Las Vegas Tribune defended and took sides with
Greenspun’s oldest son Brian, who Las Vegas Tribune thought was trying
to preserve the family newspaper, but that was before Brian Greenspun
had turned into a despicable socialist communist who would have shamed
both of his deceased parents.
The daily newspaper wants to dissolve the joint agreement intended to
preserve both newspapers. In exchange, the Greenspun family would
receive the domain name lasvegas.com, a website the Greenspun family
currently leases from the owners of the daily newspaper for up to $2.5
million a year and then subleases to the Las Vegas Convention and
Visitors Authority.
It was never understood why Brian Greenspun did not want to take his
father’s newspaper back and try to make of it the same great newspaper
his father built and ran for all those years.
Las Vegas was a city with three dailies and several weekly newspapers,
and Las Vegas Tribune had pointed out that this was reminiscent of the
old days when Las Vegas was on the top of the world, proudly boasting
three dailies, two of them with two editions, morning and evening,
plus with two morning runs; many people would not even go to bed
without reading the morning edition of The Las Vegas Sun.
In many people’s opinions, Brian Greenspun destroyed in only a few
years what his father took almost half a century to build up, just to
pretend to be the millionaire he may not be.
In a New York Times article, the writer refers to Brian Greenspun as
“Tanned and fit, collar unbuttoned and no socks under his loafers,
Brian Greenspun, the president of The Las Vegas Sun, stood in the
middle of the newsroom, surrounded by $500 Herman Miller chairs,
flat-screen monitors and floor-to-ceiling third-story windows offering
an unmatched view of the Las Vegas Strip.”
Perhaps if Brian Greenspun stopped pretending to be a tanned-and-fit
playboy and sold those $500 Herman Miller chairs and flat-screen
monitors and bought himself a pair of socks and pretended to be a
publisher, he might be able to save the newspaper his father worked so
hard for and give his competitor a good run for the money.
In fact, Brian Greenspun should approach his old buddy from college
and ask him to invest a few million in his newspaper to help brainwash
this community with his perverted mentality and their
socialist-communist indoctrination.
My name is Rolando Larraz, and as always, I approved this column.
* * * * *
Rolando Larraz is Editor in Chief of the Las Vegas Tribune. His column
appears weekly in this newspaper. To contact Rolando Larraz, email him
at: Rlarraz@lasvegastribune.com or at 702-272-4634.