Wherein "Newspaper" Officially Jumps Shark

How many times before have we had to point out the lousy excuse for "journalism" that constantly fills the pages of Nevada's largest "newspaper"? There was its insane campaign against Harry Reid in 2010. There was its disgusting campaign against Steven Horsford in 2012. And there have been so many other FAIL-o-rific moments that we lost count 3 years ago.

But now, this "newspaper" has finally achieved its crown jewel of EPIC FAIL! No really, this shit is way too crazy for anyone to make up.

Indeed, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, which almost never credits other journalists for breaking stories and regularly takes content from other organizations, has had the Associated Press send a letter to broadcast outlets invoking a contract privilege to block them from using RJ content found on the wires as of Jan. 24. These are the same folks who, under the "leadership" of then-Publisher Sherman Frederick, hired a company to protect its content, an effort that quickly became a national embarrassment.

I feel badly for business reporter Jennifer Robison, who had to write a story last week about this latest RJ initiative long after it had been broken by other news organizations. Check out that irony, folks!

The letter [...] indicates that the AP, and rightly so, thinks its service is a way to share content, not block it: "Generally we encourage sharing among members and give credit to exclusive news within the story so significant stories can be published broadly as a service to the public and a way to build the member's brand," wrote Anthony Marquez, the AP regional chief based in LA. (By the way, I called the AP last week for comment and....got no return call.)

Now, I acknowledge that the RJ's brand is so damaged after the 2010 Kill Reid debacle that maybe it does not want to build it, and it long ago gave up on being a service to the public. But even for the "newspaper," this is an abomination.

Now you know what's coming next. Yes, we must do it now!



Congratulations, "Newspaper"! You can now ride that "FAIL WHALE" all the way to the sunset. After all, whatever was left of your credibility truly is gone at this point.

Still, I can't laugh about this entirely. After all, this is supposed to be the largest "newspaper" in the state. And there are still some good reporters there who try to deliver solid, good news. It's just pathetic that the parent company has allowed this "newspaper" to devolve into such a nasty, worthless rag by failing to invest in more original reporting, allowing way too much radical right opinion to permeate the news pages, and by waging this completely absurd war against legitimate content sharing.

So until this problem is fixed, you will no longer see any links to the "newspaper" here. And other than perhaps the occasional mocking and/or fact checking, you probably won't even hear about it any more here. Hey, what's fair is fair. And we can no longer take any shark jumping from this FAIL WHALE.