A few weeks ago, The Associated Press reported on a skirmish involving Stephens Media and the newspapers it controls in Las Vegas. In short, the publisher-editor of the Las Vegas Sun, Brian Greenspun, has accused Stephens, which owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal, of trying to end the papers' joint-operating agreement, buying out the Sun and its Internet interests.
Today, the New York Times takes a closer look at Greenspun, his family and his battle to save the Sun. At the heart of the matter is a family dispute over the future of the Sun:
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.
You can read the complete story here. Stephens Media is owned by Little Rock financier Warren Stephens and his cousins Witt Stephens Jr. and Elizabeth Stephens Campbell.
