Las Vegas newspaper backing Trump posts lowest print circulation in 60 years

Posted on by September 23, 2024
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newspaper backing Trump

Las Vegas Review-Journal, September 22, 2024

With Election Day just six weeks off, the presidential race is a dead heat. That’s especially true here in Nevada, that giant morass of mountains, desert and casinos considered one of the Seven Swing States. The latest poll, from Emerson College/The Hill, shows Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald J. Trump tied at 47% each for the Silver State’s six electoral votes. The candidates clearly need all the local influencers they can get to proclaim their virtues as loudly as possible.

Which is why a legal notice buried at the bottom of page 5-G in yesterday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state’s most formidable newspaper and a long-time bullhorn for Trump, spells big local trouble for The Donald. The notice was the paper’s legally required once-a-year sworn statement of circulation.

The data showed that the RJ‘s paid print circulation has fallen to its lowest level in six decades! Even including digital subscriptions, the total paid circulation is the lowest in five decades!

Put another way, less than 7% of the households in the RJ’s main market area of Clark County–home to an overwhelming 78% of Nevada’s population–will be directly exposed to the RJ‘s loud clamor of editorials, cartoons and columns beating the drum for the one-time President. Six decades ago, such a din would have reached 60% of the households. Continue reading →

From Las Vegas, how an only-in-Nevada ballot rule could stump Trump

Posted on by November 4, 2024
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only-in-Nevada ballot rule

2020 presidential ballot in Nevada

With its six electoral votes, Nevada is one of the seven battleground states that likely will determine the next president of the United States. By all accounts the race is pretty close in the Silver State. The latest poll shows Democrat Kamala Harris with a 1% edge over Republican Donald J. Trump, 47% to 46%, well within the proverbial statistical margin of error.

So anything could happen. But as someone New to Las Vegas who has studied Nevada election trends, I’m here to tell you that Harris has a secret weapon in her favor unique among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, especially if the race stays close. A nearly half-century-old law requires that the ballot for every statewide race give voters the option to choose “None of These Candidates.”

Along with another law that prohibits write-in candidates, it is an article of faith among devotees of Nevada politics that the NOTC option draws far more disenchanted Republican voters than it does disenchanted Democratic voters. The GOP simply hates it, which is why in the past the party has gone to court–unsuccessfully–to get the line eliminated. But Republicans are not challenging it in court this time around. Continue reading →

As ‘Casino’ defined Las Vegas, so ‘The Third Man’–75 years old today–depicted Vienna

Posted on by December 1, 2024
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Mostly shot on location, the movie is full of shady characters depicting a fading era in a famously corrupt city trying to cope with change amid moral decay. Mysterious forces abound. Folks get murdered. There is a love interest. Law enforcement is everywhere. The chief villain is almost sympathetic. The soundtrack is striking. So is the acting. Memorable scenes and dialogue abound. After all the carnage, you don’t know watching the ending whether to cry or cheer, but you know you’ve seen something profound

Since I am New To Las Vegas, you might think I’m writing about “Casino.” That’s the 1995 Martin Scorsese-directed movie starting Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone about the rise–and fall–of corrupt mob control over the casinos that help build up Las Vegas.

But I’m not. Instead, I’m describing “The Third Man.” The film noir, starring Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard and Alida Valli, is about corruption in post-World War II Vienna, Austria. The flick had its world premiere in London exactly 75 years ago today, in 1949. Continue reading →

In Las Vegas, careful parsing from the Nevada Republican Party

Posted on by August 26, 2024
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Nevada Republican PartyAt the New to Las Vegas world headquarters I received in the mail today a flyer from the Nevada Republican Party (headed, it should be noted, by a fake elector) listing “Trump’s Real Common Sense Agenda.” The last point, which you can see nearby: “Keep violent criminals off the streets” (circle added by me).

In my view, the clear implication seems to be that it’s okay for non-violent criminals–like say, anyone declared guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records–to stay on the streets. Personally, I find it hard to pick and choose among felons.

I’m wondering if that printed agenda point was carefully hedged–not “criminals” or “all criminals” but just “violent criminals.” Otherwise, it might appear that Silver State Republicans were calling for the jailing of their ultimate leader.

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Far from Las Vegas: the strange Austrian tale of Joseph Haydn’s head

Posted on by August 14, 2025
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Joseph Haydn's head

Joseph Haydn

Near the front of Wiener Zentralfriedhof, the grand cemetery of Vienna, Austria, sit the final resting spots for a murderer’s row of history’s most celebrated classical composers. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), to name but a few. There’s even a monument to Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791), although he’s actually buried in an unmarked grave in another Vienna cemetery.

But missing is perhaps the greatest composer of all: Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). Besides writing a lot of great music, he’s considered the father of symphonies and string quartets. Haydn is now entombed 40 miles away in Eisenstadt, capital of the rural Austrian state of Burgenland, where he composed and debuted so many of his famous works.

However, herein lies a tale full of deception, chicanery and just plain un-believability. Four days after Haydn’s death in Vienna in 1809, associates severed his skull, supposedly for scientific research. Initially buried in Vienna, the rest of Haydn’s body made it back to Eisenstadt in 1820 while the head remained in Vienna, first hidden but later bequeathed by will, passed around and sometimes put on public display!

It wasn’t until 1954–a full 145 years after Haydn’s death at age 77–that his real skull and body came together again where they are now. That’s in a marble mausoleum attached to the Bergkirche (Hill Church), an ornate 18th Century Catholic church built by Haydn’s musical patrons, the noble Esterházy family, and informally known as Haydn’s Church. It’s largely pay-per-view. The church today charged me, a tourist far from the New To Las Vegas world headquarters, three euros ($3.30 at current exchange rate) to open the thick mausoleum door on the side of the main sanctuary. Revealed was the sarcophagus, protected by bars, containing all of the great man–and, as it turns out, a little extra. Stay with me on this.
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Like Las Vegas and the mob, Vienna still profits from the Cold War

Posted on by August 17, 2024
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Las Vegas and Vienna

Vienna skyline

With a monument devoted to a mobster, eateries named for their luminaries and even a museum to their m.o., Las Vegas brings in good coin from the legacy of its organized crime past. It’s a topic of continuing interest. I regularly get asked about this heritage, both by visitors to Sin City and by folks I encounter elsewhere once they realize I am New to Las Vegas.

So I’ve had a sense of déjà vu recently spending a little time around Vienna, the capital of Austria. This is a town still  profiting from its geography literally just a few miles from the old Iron Curtain separating the democratic West from the vassal states of the former Soviet Union. Continue reading →