Columnist Jon Ralston: Times’ look at Vegas is lacking

Friday, June 4, 2004 | 5:28 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

WEEKEND EDITION

June 5 - 6, 2004

So this is all the news that's fit to print about Las Vegas: Strippers don't lead glamorous lives, families reside in weekly motels, teachers are overworked and teens are troubled.

Where else but Las Vegas, sayeth the paper of record, The New York Times. Where else? How about everywhere?

In its efforts this past week to present an in-depth portrait of Las Vegas, a six-part series by a team of reporters, the Gray Lady painted in black and white -- and mostly black. With the exception of the last two installments -- one on a Hispanic hospitality worker who can afford a swell house and a flattering profile of R&R Partners chief Billy Vassiliadis -- the Times series was bleak and depressing.

But as community leaders from Mayor Oscar Goodman to the Chamber of Commerce rev up their word processors to express outrage and disappointment to the Times editors, they are reflecting the Zeitgeist of a city where a go-go-go mentality, where a don't-worry-be-happy mindset so often obscures real, endemic problems such as an overburdened educational system and a porous social safety net.

The Times series captured some of that, but what struck me was not so much the negativity, but the cliche-ridden, lazy approach to the piece. The Times, with all its resources, couldn't come up with something better than a stripper whose life is as fake as her breasts, a story that could be found from sea to shining sea? And does anyone think that the story of the unhappy kid was Vegas-specific, as if teenagers don't get rings through their noses and smoke pot in every city in America?

"It's accurate, but it's not true," Sally Field, playing a reporter, said in "Absence of Malice," a movie about a journalist who printed articles that were fact-based but presented only part of the story, thus creating a false impression.

That is what the Times has done here. It is almost as if the paper's editors, after their reporters alighted in Southern Nevada and stayed for weeks, couldn't decide what the story was supposed to be -- and that, in many ways, ironically mimics the identity crisis afflicting Las Vegas.

The real story here is the struggle for the soul -- or to find one -- of Las Vegas between those who embrace the enduring image of Sin City and want to continue to push that envelope to bring more people here and those who want Las Vegas to move beyond its crass beginnings and evolve into a thriving, mature metropolis.

This is a conflict that has continued to morph over the years and the combatants have taken different shapes, from the apocalyptic battle between the forces of UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian to backers of reform-minded Bob Maxson to a mayor who embodies both sides of the tug of war. Oscar Goodman is a symbol of the city's mob-infested past who revels in Bacchanalia and gambling but who also wants to imbue Las Vegas with culture and class to transform it into a major-league city. He wants a mob museum and brothels, as the Times pointed out; what the paper didn't say, though, was that he also wants an academic medical center and a performing arts complex.

Considering the Times conjured a theme -- "American Dreamers: The Lure of Las Vegas" -- and then sought human emblems to present the premise, it is amazing the newspaper didn't interview Goodman.

I understand what the Times was trying to accomplish in the weeklong series, which was to create a montage of images of the city, to profile people who epitomize what is happening here. The paper provided a slice of life, but too many slices were missing or ignored, leaving me hungry for what might have been.

This is not, as many will argue, just that the Times didn't show the proverbial positive side of Las Vegas. Granted, for every failed dreamer, there is Dean Richard Morgan, who quietly is working miracles at the Boyd School of Law. Or for every troubled teenager, there is some kid who surmounted his or her environment to succeed. I suppose when that happens here, it stays here.

But this is both a great city and a gross city, a place where the bright lights of the Strip may gleam for 24 hours a day but conceal the darker problems that exist in this fast-growing but slow-developing metropolis.

Where was the profile of a Gordon Gekko of the building business here, one of the reptilian developers who purrs "growth is good" to anyone who will listen, especially compliant politicians? And couldn't that have been juxtaposed with a Robert Lewis or Mark Doppe, men of integrity and vision trying to transform what was to what could be?

Where was the story of the retiree from Sun City Anthem or Sun City Summerlin who found bliss in his or her golden years in the valley? Or what about the senior citizen who came here because of the amenities and low taxes and now wants to pull up the drawbridge and allow kids and poor folk to tumble into the moat?

And where was the tale of the young family that moved to Las Vegas believing it could raise its kids and live a normal life away from the resort corridor, only to find shortsighted local government planners had allowed gaming to creep into most every corner of the valley?

Those are just a few examples of what the Times could have done, telling a tale of two cities in one place, a Las Vegas divided against itself but still standing. And still the question lingers: Are we a sleazy backwater or an emerging city?

The answer, which the Times touched on but didn't quite nail, is yes.