Sheldon Adelson exerts Control on His Vegas Newspaper

Towards the end of last year, Sheldon Adelson’s purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal (LVRJ) raised suspicion among both the newspaper staff itself and Nevada gaming regulators. And new reports reveal that Adelson may already be trying to exert more control over the paper’s stories.

The 82-year-old owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. is now using a “heavier hand” in controlling the LVRJ’s operations. Specifically, Craig Moon, the newly appointed publisher, is said to be carrying out Adelson’s dirty work.

The L.A. Times reports that Moon sat down with 20 of his staff for a conversation about better serving the LVRJ’s digital and mobile audiences. However, Moon eventually told the reporters and editors in attendance that there were going to be big changes at the paper.

One change will be dismissing the “guarantee of editorial independence” on Page 3. A new editor will also be brought aboard and a “staff shake-up” is thought to be coming.

“Moon did tell us there’s no hit list,” said an anonymous newsroom employee. “Most of the reporters don’t believe him.”

According to Moon, he did not consult with Adelson before disbanding editorial independence on Page 3. Instead, Moon chose to do so because he says that no other major paper has such a practice He also claims that no stories have been altered based on Adelson or anybody else’s direction.

“The new publisher was interested in reviewing the stories because of their potential importance to [the] community,” said Moon. “The stories all appeared in the paper after publisher review. However, none of the final stories was edited by the publisher.”

However, staffers disagree with Moon’s statements and point to specific incidents. A story about a wrongful-termination suit by an ex-Las Vegas Sands employee only received two sentences. There was also a limited, one-sentence story about Adelson’s interests in the Sands and LVRJ companies.

This appears to boil down to the LVRJ employees’ desire to continue presenting the truth about Adelson and any related subject matters, and the perceived idea that Adelson bought the paper to serve his own agenda.

John L. Smith, a longtime LVRJ reporter and Adelson hater, continues to present his side of the story as he sees fit. For example, he recently ran a story called “Desperation Plain to See with Problem Gamblers in Las Vegas,” which berates the very industry that made Adelson rich. But if the aforementioned reports are truth, Smith could see some edits to his articles in the near future.