Columnist Jon Ralston: Possibilities shine at the Sun

Friday, June 17, 2005 | 5:15 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 18-19, 2005

Displaying my usual propensity for decorum and tact, the first time I met with my current employer, I told the folks who run the Las Vegas Sun that no one reads their newspaper.

That was more than five years ago, when I left behind 15 years of working for and with the Review-Journal, to take a job with the Greenspun Corp. I hadn't taken the new post because of the Sun, but because the parent company was expanding into cyberspace and television -- and I believed that was where the future of journalism, and thus my future, lay.

As part of my responsibilities I would write a column for the Sun, but my admonition that day to the powers that be was Pink Floydish: "The Sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death." The Sun, as an afternoon newspaper, had been wheezing for years and would soon be asphyxiated by inexorable market forces.

So when I heard last week that the corporate bosses had struck a deal to return the Sun to the morning, albeit inside the Review-Journal, I was thrilled. Not as thrilled as I would have been if the Sun were to become a standalone newspaper in the a.m., but now there was a chance for more people to hear another voice.

Despite the general misunderstanding of what this means -- i.e., the Sun being taken off life support and euthanized -- this is a chance for reanimation. It is akin to a debilitating disease being treated with an experimental drug, with the only question being how it will work in the real world and whether the effects are ephemeral or long-lasting.

(Understand that this does not affect me much -- I already have benefited for years from the extra R-J readers by writing in the Sunday combined edition. My emphasis has been on television and an e-mail newsletter since I switched sides, but I hope to write more in the Sun now that it is going to the morning.)

This deal is a no-lose for the Sun, although some employees sadly will either be reassigned or discharged. It is a chance to go from nothing to something. What that something is -- anywhere from an ignored insert in the R-J to the must-read section at the breakfast table -- will depend on how this experiment is executed in a world where fewer and fewer people get their news from the print media.

Since the R-J and the Sun entered into a Joint Operating Agreement in 1990, the morning newspaper has done little to try to transform the product into something special in perhaps the best news town in the universe. The R-J entered into the JOA, thus saving the Sun from possible extinction, for the most cynical of reasons: Those who ran the paper were fearful that a real newspaper company might come in and compete with them, so they wanted to maintain the illusion of a two-newspaper town to make it economically infeasible for anyone else to enter the market.

Mission accomplished.

But while the R-J has allowed the Sun to wither and poured little resources into promoting it -- not that it could have done a lot to help an afternoon daily -- the morning paper has grown fat, lazy and arrogant. Like any relationship after a break-up, you can see the partner more clearly only after it's over. You often are in denial about some characteristics while you are in it, too close for any perspective.

When I worked for the R-J, I joined the chorus of those who lambasted the Sun for letting the parent company's diverse business interests interfere with how stories were played, maybe even written. But over the years, the glass house has been revealed as the R-J has allowed its editorial bent to bleed into its news pages, most obviously during the The Great Tax Debate of 2003 when the play of stories and the use of quotes obviously were tendentious.

What's more, having worked for both organizations, the only time a boss has tried to mandate that a story be done out of personal or business interests came while I was at the Review-Journal. That was when a crony of one of the higher-ups was fired from his job and the boss tried (unsuccessfully) to get me to do a story and vindicate his pal.

By contrast, while some of his friends have complained to him about my work, Brian Greenspun has never told me what to write, never changed a word I have written and privately and publicly supported me.

The Sun is it what it is. There is little pretense, no hubris. It is not The New York Times and certainly has had lapses, but it is no poseur.

The R-J brags about being the government watchdog, but often is the government lapdog, whether it is fawning over Mayor Oscar Goodman or deifying a conservative legislator.

The truth is that the Sun often has more in-depth reporting than the R-J, but it is generally unseen. And that is what the new Sun needs to focus on -- longer pieces, in-depth analysis, commentary that is tart and timely. I have to believe there is a place for such reporting in this community.

And we will soon find out. We will see if this is indeed a new beginning or the beginning of the end, whether the Sun is setting or getting ready to rise again.

We will discover, to get Floydish again, if you can "run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again."