It was June 2005. Mr. Greenspun, whose family has owned the paper since his parents founded it in 1950, told dozens of reporters and editors that the joint operating agreement between The Sun and its more conservative rival, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, had been amended: The Sun would become the first daily in the country to be delivered inside its competitor, as if it were a separate section.
Despite the skepticism of some staff members that day, the newspaper was able to attract top journalists from across the country, resulting in national awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2009. But the financial downturn, particularly harsh in Nevada, pummeled the paper, and dozens of longtime employees were laid off.
And now, the paper itself might disappear. Stephens Media, owner of The Review-Journal, wants to dissolve the joint agreement, intended to preserve newspapers. In exchange, the Greenspun family would receive the domain name lasvegas.com, a Web site the family currently leases from Stephens for up to $2.5 million a year and then subleases to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Mr. Greenspun’s brother, Danny Greenspun, and two sisters, Susan Greenspun Fine and Jane Greenspun Gale, all voted to accept the offer, but Brian wants to fight. Last month, he accused his siblings of “deciding to kill The Las Vegas Sun,” and he is suing Stephens, claiming that the offer gives The Review-Journal a local monopoly over news gathering and opinion.
At stake, he says, is Las Vegas’s future as a two-newspaper town. Doing away with the joint operating agreement “is equivalent to buying The Sun and shutting it down,” he said, adding of his siblings, “It’s a business deal to them.”
The dispute is the latest twist in the outsize history of the Greenspuns and Las Vegas. While there are better-known publishing families in the United States, few are more colorful.
Hank Greenspun started the paper with his wife, Barbara, after working as a publicist for the gangster Bugsy Siegel. In the 1940s, he was convicted of running guns to the paramilitary group that would become the Israeli Defense Forces. (He was fined, never jailed and later pardoned by President John F. Kennedy.) In the ensuing decades, he helped end segregation on the Strip, developed an 8,000-acre master-planned community and brought cable television to Las Vegas. He was also revealed to be a proposed target of the Watergate burglars. The Greenspun name is on schools, clinics and colleges.
The Sun first came to prominence in the 1950s for its opposition to Senator Patrick McCarran’s red-baiting tactics. (Hank Greenspun was also a vociferous opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy.) It continued to be a liberal voice amid the city’s dizzying growth, but by the time of Hank Greenspun’s death in 1989, the paper was losing millions. Within months, the joint agreement was created, but circulation continued to slide. By 2005, when the deal was revised, The Sun had fewer than 30,000 readers and essentially became a 6- to 10-page insert with no advertising.
On that day in 2005, Mr. Greenspun assured the 75 or so staff members that the deal would let the paper reinvest in journalism. In 2009, the paper won the industry’s highest honor, a Pulitzer Prize, for a series about construction deaths on the Strip.
But as the economy staggered, many of those same journalists were laid off or left. The paper once received as much as $12 million a year in profit-sharing through the joint agreement and now receives $1.3 million. Last month, the Greenspuns voted to dissolve the partnership.
None of the other Greenspun siblings would discuss the case. Brian Greenspun maintains that the deal violates antitrust laws. “In every antitrust violation, there’s always been at least two parties who combine based on it being a good business decision,” he said. His lawyers include Leif Reid, son of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, another prominent family in Nevada and long supported by The Sun.
But Donald Campbell, outside counsel for Stephens, said: “We believe his beef is with the wrong people. He is a dissident shareholder. The problem he has is with his own family.” Mr. Campbell also said the offer did not include a noncompete clause, so the Greenspuns, or anyone else, would face no legal obstacle in continuing to print The Sun. Mr. Greenspun contends that the costs to do so would be prohibitive.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/business/media/a-newspaper-in-las-vegas-at-risk-of-closing-divides-a-family.html?partner=rss&emc=rss