Las Vegas Chamber in dispute with weekly business publication

Monday, Nov. 29, 1999 | 11:02 a.m.

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce is complaining about an inaccurate report in a weekly newspaper that suggested the Greenspun Media Group paid for chamber officials to vacation in Mexico.

Rod Smith, editor and publisher of the weekly Las Vegas Business Press, suggested in a Nov. 15 column that chamber officials were vacationing on the tab of the Greenspun Media Group. But in this week's Business Press, Smith says that was wrong.

"Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce honchos recently got a freebie to Acapulco, but their trip was not paid for by the Greenspun Media Group as suggested on this page Nov. 15," Smith wrote in this week's edition.

The Chamber and the Business Press have been at odds since the Chamber announced plans to move production, printing and distribution work for its monthly newsletter from the Business Press to the Greenspun Media Group.

The Greenspun family controls the Las Vegas Sun and the Greenspun Media Group, which includes magazines and a weekly alternative newspaper. Greenspun Media Group is also considering starting a business publication that would compete with the Business Press.

Further worsening relations between the Business Press and the chamber is the fact that Bruce Spotleson, formerly the publisher of the Business Press, won the chamber publishing contract after going to work for the Greenspun Media Group.

In the December Chamber newsletter "The Business Voice" -- which was distributed in the Business Press -- the Chamber lashed out at Smith and the Business Press.

It called the charge that the Greenspun Media Group paid for the trip "totally untrue and defamatory."

"Accordingly, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce has demanded an immediate retraction of this vicious and totally unfounded assertion," the Chamber newsletter says.

The Chamber said trips to Mexico were given to chamber volunteers to recognize their contributions to the chamber's annual fundraising campaign.

"The trips were paid for entirely by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce," the chamber said. "The Greenspun Media Group had absolutely no connection to the origin or financial support of those trips."