In 2021–on December 14 to be precise–the name of the major airport in Las Vegas was officially changed to Harry Reid International Airport. The idea was to honor the longtime U.S. senator from Nevada through 2017, who died just two weeks later at age 82. The old name had memorialized another long-time Nevada senator, Pat McCarran. He was a proponent of aviation whose political persona in later life before his 1954 death at age 78–racist, antisemitic, anti-free press and maybe corrupt–had not weathered well.
So it was a little surprising at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters today to open the Las Vegas Review-Journal (yes, I still get the paper thrown to the door) and see the map displayed nearby. It shows the route of a new water pipeline to be built across the Las Vegas area. Toward the upper left-hand corner is labeled … “McCarran International Airport.”
In this new age of AI, of course, one never knows where the underlying information is really coming from. But maybe this helps explain why the RJ, which editorially was never much of a fan of Reid, is now the third largest daily newspaper in the country never to have won a Pulitzer Prize.
The hearings have been held and almost all the briefs are in. It will be up to a federal judge in Nevada to decide if the Las Vegas Sun will ever see the light of print again. A ruling could come soon. In my view, it’s a loooong shot for the 76-year-old daily newspaper.
