On Sunday, September 21, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published on the front page of its local news section a story with this headline: “RJ wins 28 first-place awards in annual journalism contest.” Spread across all five columns, the prominently displayed, 1,185-word-long article about the Nevada Press Foundation honors jumped to most of another page and included 12 photos of beaming staffers working for the state’s most prominent news organization.
A week later, on Sunday, September 28, the RJ published another item about itself. But this one was much harder to find and contained no pictures. It was buried amid classified ads offering furnished rooms for rent (“own bathroom, kitchen use”) in the middle of the seventh section.
In the tiny type of a legal notice, the RJ published data showing another significant yearly paid circulation decline.
Paying RJ readers have now dropped 77% since the current ownership assumed control a decade ago in 2015. This appears to be far worse than the admittedly dismal national trends in the newspaper industry for the same period–even though the local population in Las Vegas has risen by double the national rate. Indeed, the paid circulation is the paper’s lowest in nearly six decades. One has to go way back to 1968 to find a similar number. What was once a market penetration of 60% of all households in its market of Clark County is down to about 7%.
As a newspaperman long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I find this incredibly sad. It’s especially so because the RJ‘s news product recently has shown some signs of life.
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A record four of my 13 Las Vegas predictions for 2025 made last December came true during the year (sort of, anyway). This is truly astonishing given my list was mainly intended as satirical social commentary.
