Vital Vegas, a fun, chatty blog about Vegas, casinos, and nightlife, includes among their 20 Predictions For 2016 that Sheldon Adelson buying the Review-Journal will blow up badly in his face. I agree. The purchase was made secretly yet within days everyone figured out who the new owner was. Plus there’s that icky bit about a Connecticut newspaper owned by Adelson running a hit piece on a Vegas judge investigating him. Hmm. And of course Adelson’s clumsy tactics have now attracted the interest of investigative journalists nationwide. Sounds to me like he’s aging and the spaghetti might be starting to slip off the plate.
The Review-Journal is a good newspaper. We get the print version. If Adelson screws it up with biased right-wing gibberish we’ll cancel our subscription. So will lots of other subscribers. And that’s the real problem. If Adelson craters the paper, no one will want to buy it.
Bajillionaire Sheldon Adelson recently purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal and all hell broke loose. Further hell is guaranteed to break in 2016 as the Presidential campaign heats up and Mr. Adelson exerts more control over the paper’s editorial direction. Reporters will quit or be forced out, and the Review-Journal will be in the national spotlight for questions surrounding ethics and the influence of money on journalism. There’s no avoiding this crisis, because even if Adelson comes to realize the Review-Journal isn’t worth all the headaches, nobody else is going to pony up anywhere near the $140 million he paid to buy it, so this tangled web is only going to get more tangled.