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Posted At : May 20, 2008 10:56 AM | Posted By : D McKee
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Harrah's
Reader Terry Faber asks, "Why did Harrah's [Entertainment] ban the RJ?"
Terry, your guess is as good as mine. On April 13, the Las Vegas Review-Journal revealed to its readers that it had been pulled from gift shops at Harrah's Las Vegas casinos. At first, Harrah's positioned the move as a cost-cutting strategy (the company is now owned by a couple of bean-counting outfits called TPG and Apollo Management). Yes, not only had Harrah's discontinued the "thousands" (its estimates) of comped guest-room R-Js, it had also yanked the 600 copies it sold in its gift shops.
The New York Times got wind of this, at which point Harrah's rolled out Explanation 2.0: "When people come here from out of town, they're not really interested in the local news." And, if they are, they can always go online.
Of course, people visiting Las Vegas, say, from Kamloops, British Columbia, might not be interested in the NYT, Wall Street Journal or USA Today, either, but Harrah's will continue to carry those journals. Just don't expect to come to Las Vegas, stay at a Harrah's property and able to read about the very city you are visiting. (Oh, and Harrah's advertising just happened to vanish from the R-J, too.)
What the R-J has implied, others have stated openly: Harrah's is engaging in payback for a superior set of investigative pieces (like this one) documenting instances where Harrah's played fast and loose with safety, conducted renovations on the sly (or with the connivance of county safety building inspectors), and apparently did it in order to avoid having to pay for building permits. As a colleague of mine put it, the one time the R-J does some honest-to-God enterprise reporting, they get punished for it.
During his tenure at Harrah's, CEO Gary Loveman has acquired a reputation, fairly or not, for carrying grudges to marathon lengths. But if he thought this was a one-week story that would just blow away like a discarded R-J "Lifestyle" (pardon me, "Living") section, he's wrong. Judging from the way the in-person and online complaints (mostly elsewhere) keep mounting up, his customers aren't going to let him forget.
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Actually, I'm pretty sure you can get all three there. I've never been to Kamloops, but seen them elsewhere in Canada.
I tend to agree with the assertion that tourist patterns don't leave much room for the R-J. When the Sun was it's own paper, it was near impossible to find hotels that would carry them as well. When I was a visitor from California, I'd go for the LA Times just because it was closer to home (though coming from the San Francisco market, not very close.) Even as a resident I struggle to care about the R-J. Between the internet as a news source, their right-wing slant, and their obsession with the tourist corridor. The other day celebrity visits and a Strip chef winning an award was put three or four pages ahead of Burma. Doesn't that just about say it all?
Anyone who does care enough will wander over to one of the CVS or Walgreens that dot the Strip. Or, I guess in the meantime, an MGM property.