L.A. Times editor joining Sun

Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2005 | 10:53 a.m.

Tom Gorman, a Los Angeles Times editor, will join the Sun in September as a general interest columnist.

Gorman, 53, is no stranger to Las Vegas.

He opened the Times bureau in Las Vegas in 2000 and spent the next three years writing about gambling, politics, Yucca Mountain and Western regional issues before returning to Southern California.

"I've known Tom Gorman for a long time and I've always envied the Los Angeles Times because they had him and we didn't," Sun President and Editor Brian Greenspun said. "Now we've got him and it's just the beginning."

Sun Managing Editor Michael J. Kelley said he is looking forward to Gorman's columns about Las Vegas.

"Getting Tom is a great catch for us," Kelley said. "He is a terrific reporter and a wonderful writer. He has a thorough knowledge and understanding of our city and its players -- and he loves it here.

"Tom will write a column that people will eagerly look forward to reading."

"After 33 years of playing it straight down the middle as a reporter," Gorman said by telephone from Southern California, "I now have license to let my opinions enter my writings. Las Vegas is a target-rich environment, where you can find plenty of opportunities to find anger, humor, drama and comedy.

"People tend to either love or hate Las Vegas. I have friends who wonder why I would want to live there.

"I find Las Vegas to be both an all-American town and a fascinating aberration. There is the juxtaposition of wealth framed by pockets of poverty. There are people firmly based in religious faith as opposed to people who pay homage to the money gods. You have normal neighborhoods surrounded by things that are garish. It's a city of such stark and fascinating contrasts.

"I would expect to find a treasure trove of anecdotes and stories that will illustrate all the different ways people live out their values."

A native of Kankakee, Ill., Gorman attended high school in Southern California and earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from California State University at Fullerton.

He joined the Times upon graduation from college in 1973, spending 15 years of his career as a general assignment reporter in San Diego before running a bureau that covered Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

A year after he opened the Las Vegas bureau the Times named Gorman a national correspondent. For the last two years he has been an assistant Metro editor in Orange County.

In 2003, his final year based in Las Vegas with the Times, Gorman wrote about the annual motorcycle rally in Laughlin.

"Leather stretches taut across the shoulders of the bikers as they throttle their engines and look dismissively at the car-bound," he wrote. "The signature roar that envelopes them is not mere noise, it's their calling card.

"The rest of society can just deal with it. That goes for the kids and grandkids, too."

Gorman also wrote that year about Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's re-election bid.

"If this city gambled four years ago in electing former mob lawyer Oscar Goodman as mayor, residents seem ready now to coronate him," Gorman wrote.

Another topic that earned a Gorman byline was the Lake Las Vegas resort in Henderson.

"As much as we relished the peace of Viera, a just-opened condominium-hotel at the new MonteLago Village of shops and restaurants, we wondered who besides us would choose this languid retirement community-like setting over the high-energy smorgasbord of the Strip," Gorman wrote.

"The answer came while we were humming across the lake in a canopied, 10-passenger electric water taxi. The young couple opposite us seemed a tad too cool. They looked vibrant and adventurous, the sort of people who might stay up past 10 p.m.

"What, we asked, are you guys doing out here? We're from Iowa, they said. Spent several days on the Strip, they said. Partied hearty and came to Lake Las Vegas to relax before heading home. And so there it was. Lake Las Vegas is the anti-Strip, a kind of decompression chamber, the place to readjust one's timing after a high-octane outing on Las Vegas Boulevard 17 miles away."

Gorman is a self-described regular guy -- a "Joe six-pack" -- with no hobbies beyond throwing his feet on the coffee table and channel surfing.

In moving back to Las Vegas with Jeanne, his wife of 33 years, Gorman will also rejoin his married son Paul and daughter-in-law Sarah, who live here.