SEE UPDATES AT END OF POST
Originally published April 3, 2026
Updated April 6, 2026
Updated April 8, 2026
In 2019 here’s what I opined in this space. The fresh federal-court lawsuit brought by the Las Vegas Sun against its larger, long-time joint-operating-agreement business partner, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, claiming antitrust violations was simply absurd, given that the law allowed such restraints of trade. “Imagine,” I began, in the style of Rod Serling opening an episode of “The Twilight Zone:” “Two thieves who, after a heist, can’t agree on the division of spoils, and one of them actually sues the other in court. Outrageous, eh?
Seven years and millions of dollars in legal fees later, we know the outcome, thanks to rulings from a federal appellate court: Yes, it was outrageous. The case was tossed. And as a result the Sun is on its deathbed, at least in print.
Today, the RJ stopped printing the Sun, an ad-free one-section insert inside the RJ. The Sun likely does not have the wherewithal to print it alone.
The death of any newspaper, of course, is to be lamented, as it reduces information reaching the public. (Long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I worked for several newspapers in competitive markets that later went under.) Already-media-starved Nevada will be left with just three daily print newspapers. But how much that benefits the RJ in the longer run remains to be seen. Latest circulation numbers appear to show a continuing decline, and now readers will receive less of a package. And as I wrote in yet another 2019 post about this fight, “In a battle between two scorpions in a bottle, only one will survive–assuming the bottle doesn’t sink in water and also kill the victor.”
Since 1989 the two Las Vegas newspapers have been in a joint operation agreement, sanctioned by a 1970 federal law called the Newspaper Preservation Act. That allows two newspapers complete immunity from antitrust laws to combine business operations and jack up their circulation and ad rates so long as one paper initially was in danger of failing (here, the Sun) and editorial operations remain independent.
Originally, the two Las Vegas papers were published in separate editions, the larger RJ in the morning and the smaller Sun moving to the afternoon. But in 2005 the JOA was revised to make the Sun a section of the morning RJ. The larger RJ continued to bear the complete cost of printing, ad-selling and distribution–everything except news and editorial. The Sun covered that from a 10% cut of the cash flow. As originally envisioned, the JOA would run until 2040.
In the year after 2005, according to court records, the agency cash flow was a whopping $120 million, yielding $12 million to the Sun. But thanks to the Internet, new media, Craigslist siphoning off classified ads, changing consumer habits–and maybe some inept management–the cash flow turned sharply negative. Yet the RJ contractually still had to print and distribute the Sun at its own expense. Despite winning the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service about construction workers deaths along the Las Vegas Strip, the Sun’s editorial product withered away. The paper managed to function with a minuscule staff that mainly edited wire copy and covered little local. Toward the end, the Sun had more lawyers than reporters, and it showed daily.
To put it bluntly, there was little trade left for the two papers to restrain. So properly understood, any JOA usually became nothing but a stay of execution for the weaker paper. Indeed, the Vegas JOA was the last of the two dozen or so that once dotted the fruited plain. They were found in such major cities as Albuquerque, Cincinnati, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Miami, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle and Tucson, and smaller places like Bristol, Tenn.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Ft. Wayne, Ind.; Oil City, Pa.; Tulsa, Okla.; and York, Pa. Today, some important cities, like Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Portland, Ore., don’t even have one daily newspaper in print.
Founded in 1950, the moderately liberal Sun has been owned continually by the family of its buccaneering, crusading founder, Hank Greenspun, whose name adorns both the journalism school and the public affairs college at UNLV. He died in 1989. The paper’s current owner is his son, Brian Greenspun. Dating back to 1909, the conservative RJ has changed hands several times but since 2015 has been owned by the family of Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who died in 2021.
The Sun‘s antitrust lawsuit in federal court was a response to a state court case (apparently still pending) by the RJ to end the JOA on breach-of-contract grounds. Indeed, the RJ used the declining market share enjoyed by newspapers to defend itself against antitrust claims. In court filings the two papers hurled a lot of invective about the perceived failings of each other. As best I can tell, most all of this was true (and very entertaining to read!).
But, according to court records, the RJ’s real break legally came when its lawyers discovered this: When the JOA–under control of a previous RJ owner–was revised in 2005 to make the Sun a section of the RJ, the parties failed to get the explicit written permission of the U.S. attorney general. Whereas JOAs in existence before the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act were grandfathered in from needing such okays–they just had to notify Justice–a separate provision in the law required such approval for post 1970-JOAs, like the one in Las Vegas.
The lawyers even unearthed an April 2008 letter from Justice saying that its decision to not look further into the matter “was not based on a conclusion that the 2005 amendments to the parties’ Joint Operating Agreement are protected by the antitrust immunity afforded by the Newspaper Preservation Act,” and that the 2005 JOA “remains subject to antitrust scrutiny.” One might imagine the unchanged management of the Sun knew this all along, even as it filed the antitrust lawsuit back in 2019.
Well. The RJ‘s lawyers started screaming in federal court this ended the matter once and for all. That didn’t persuade Anne R. Traum, the Las Vegas federal district court judge overseeing the case. But it was quite persuasive to a unanimous panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. “Because it did not receive the required ‘prior consent of the Attorney General,’ the 2005 JOA is unlawful and unenforceable,” Judge Daniel P. Collins wrote in a 34-page opinion. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Sun‘s appeal.
In an editorial today, the RJ declared, “We just don’t want to foot the bill. It is time the Sun stood up on its own two feet.” Of course, the RJ has had the benefits of the loss-writing-off-ability–one mysterious Adelson entity revealed during the litigation, Interface Operations LLC d/b/a Adfam, might facilitate this–and deep pockets of the family, who according to Forbes is now worth $36.5 billion. Indeed, Adelson in 2015 had paid a huge amount for the RJ–$140 million–in what some thought was an effort to suppress unfavorable local coverage about some of his activities while encouraging investigations of some of his rivals.
Now, with the RJ stopping the printing and essentially daring the Sun to do something about it, the Sun doesn’t seem to have a lot of good options left. Brian Greenspun is wealthy, but not Adelson wealthy. But the paper wrote on its website today, “This is not over yet. And we intend to be back in print before the audience we built over many years very soon.”
A federal court filing late today after a 2½-hour hearing before Traum in Las Vegas that involved 13 (!!!) lawyers either present or on remote hookups suggests the Sun and its legal team will be scrambling over the weekend to come up with a new legal theory against a deadline set for 10:00 a.m. on Monday. With her hands tied by the appellate decision, Traum notably did not order the RJ to resume printing the Sun.
One approach might be to insist–perhaps as negotiating leverage–that the original 1989 JOA agreement, which was approved by Justice, should be reinstated. But that might require publication of a separate afternoon Sun, hardly a viable economic endeavor in this environment. In 2015–the year the Adelsons bought in–the RJ’s circulation was 232,372. But according to the UK’s Press-Gazette, the RJ‘s own daily circulation now is down to a mere 27,000, a stunning 88% drop (but still enough subscribers to be the country’s 20th largest newspaper by circulation). How many would buy an afternoon newspaper?
Another response could be to try and turn the paper into an online-only outlet like the nonprofit Nevada Independent, founded by noted Nevada journalist Jon Ralston sort of as a counterweight to the RJ. This has happened in a few ex-JOA cities. For example, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (coincidentally once owned by the man on whose land the historic Huntridge subdivision in Las Vegas was later built) ceased print operations in 2009 but has lingered on as seattlepi.com .
However, whatever remaining influence The Sun once had–Hank Greenspun’s thundering editorials helped elect Nevada governors and sink Joseph R. McCarthy–likely will go poof. Sorta like into the Twilight Zone.