Nevada's biggest stories in 2022 from the perspectives of those who've reported on them plus what to watch out for in 2023, that's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Among Nevada's numerous headlines this year, the mask mandate ended, multiple sets of human remains were found in a shrinking Lake Mead, a renowned journalist was murdered, and a new governor was elected; but what stories mattered most to the reporters who actually covered them, and what big news do they anticipate in 2023?

For that we bring in April Corbin Girnus, deputy editor for the Nevada Current; Briana Erickson, investigative reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal; John Katsilometes, entertainment columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal; Howard Stutz, gaming and tourism reporter for the Nevada Independent; and Steve Cofield, host of Cofield & Company on ESPN Las Vegas.

So happy to have all of you here around the table.

I would like to start off with the murder of Jeff German, a story that hits home to all of us as journalists and broadcasters, the thought that something we report on, write on, or say could lead to us being physically harmed.

Briana, you have been tasked with extensively reporting on his murder, and I wonder what you think his legacy is.

(Briana Erickson) Well, he left behind a 40-year career in Las Vegas, you know, mentored all of us younger journalists, as well.

He's reported on the mob, broke stories in federal court that became national news, high-profile cases.

So his legacy means so much more than how he died.

But in his death, you know, he may be setting precedent for, you know, how reporter shield laws are protected in Nevada, because he did-- They did confiscate his devices, and right now we are fighting for those to not be reviewed in full by law enforcement and, you know, only things that pertain to the case.

-Actual investigation of his murder.

For those who may not understand, why is that important that authorities do not have access to all his devices?

-He knew many sources, some that were private, some that were-- their identities were always protected by him.

And it's important that we honor that and keep protecting Jeff's sources who don't want to be identified and are, frankly, scared that they could be when those devices are searched.

-Right.

Kats, in your article about German's impact on you, you said his lasting message was, quote, Just stick with the facts.

(John Katsilometes) Yeah, we were working together on Mobbed Up , the podcast.

That was the last time I had any communication with him.

I was tasked with interviewing Wayne Newton about his involvement in owning the Aladdin in those days, in the early 80s, late 70s and early 80s.

And I had-- I was gonna go up to Montana and interview Wayne at his ranch, and we were getting a lot of contact about how to handle that interview, because it was gonna be very, very heavy, very heavy questions.

And I was like, man, you know, I'm going into this guy's, I know into his home, and really gonna ask him some uncomfortable questions.

We were talking about how to work things, and he just says, Just facts, just go present the facts, and that's all you're there to do; you're a conduit for that.

And that was, you know, very much him.

I worked with Jeff for a long time, 18 years total at the Las Vegas Sun and Greenspun Media Group, before coming back over to the RJ.

And I just will tell you that that guy-- I used to-- His office was always to the left of me in two different buildings at the Sun.

So I always had to pass Jeff's office when I was on my way to the editor in chief's office or break room.

I always had to go by his office, and I'd hear him on the phone.

And I'm like, just the word "grind," just grinding, you know, just going after people all the time.

And I'm like, I wouldn't want to be on the other end of that call.

And he was a very competitive journalist, especially in the Sun days against the Review-Journal.

He established that they were the foe, you know, and he was motivated by that.

When I came over to the Sun, he made that clear.

And it was-- It's surreal to be talking about him in the past tense.

And I feel like it's a personal loss, but it's also an attack on what we do as journalists, what happened to Jeff.

-Right.

-I feel that way.

It's an assault against our industry and our culture.

-I imagine others feel the same way around here.

(Howard Stutz) Yeah.

Like John, I worked with Jeff back at the Sun back in the 80s.

And it was with the RJ when he came over in, I think, 2010.

That's-- What I saw is how this affected a lot of our young journalists that I work with at the Nevada Independent, you know, to see this as you just said.

I see how this happened.

And I-- And I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the work that Briana and the RJ reporters did, in reporting on this story at the same time that they're mourning, you know, grieving about the loss of their, their colleague.

They don't teach this in journalism school.

And Briana and the team at the RJ did just an amazing job.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't point that out.

-Steve, April, anything you want to add?

Steve, I know in sports, you upset people.

And how far has it-- How far has it gotten in your experience?

(Steve Cofield) It hasn't gotten that far with me, but the attack on journalism is the thing that hit me.

I mean, the reporting was unbelievable; but the attack on journalism, especially with the atmosphere right now and fake news and, you know, people will come up to me and say things about journalism, thinking that I'm not a journalist.

And you know, we're-- I may not be as serious as everyone else around the table, but, you know, the attack on all of us is something to fight back on.

-In sports, you still have the responsibility of showing both sides and presenting the facts.

April, anything you'd like to add?

(April Corbin Girnus) I'm gonna think everybody sort of summed it up.

I didn't have the pleasure of working with him, but obviously knew his work.

And like everyone's saying, this attack on journalism has been increasing over the years.

I know that at the sort of height of Trump rallies and all of that, our news organization was, like-- Typically, you would always have your sort of news badge out, and you would identify yourself as a journalist; but we had to have a lot of deep conversations about, is that safer for you, you know?

And obviously, this isn't related to that movement, but I think it's part of a larger sphere of people not trusting journalists and lashing out.

It's something to be taken seriously, but I've been really happy with the way I've heard the RJ and all publications have taken any sort of threat seriously.

Like, if you get an angry email, it's immediately forwarded to your boss, and they will forward it to Metro when they-- You know, they're taking things very seriously, which they should be, given what's happened.

-Briana, in your covering of German's murder, allegedly at the hands of Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles, who German had written critically of, you wrote, quote, Telles' toxic behavior never raised alarms at the institutions that could have held him accountable, end quote.

Do you think his murder could have been prevented?

-I don't know.

I don't know if it could have been prevented, but there were definitely steps that could have been taken to hold him accountable for the behavior he exhibited, starting at law school.

And this is something that Jeff was reporting before he died.

He had left behind a lot of files and clues in the newsroom that I was able to kind of use to finish his reporting, which is so important because we don't want to send the message that if you kill the journalists, the story is killed.

So that was our motivation for finishing his work.

And back to Telles, you know, starting at UNLV Law School, he was accused of sexually harassing a woman.

And they went so far-- At the time, he was president of the bar association, of the Student Bar Association, and the students wanted to impeach him.

Instead, they voted him out in a vote of no confidence.

But there was no action taken by the university.

They did release a letter saying they did an investigation that found no, no evidence at all.

And then when he became a private practice attorney, there are two women that we talked to that said the sexual harassment continued, as they were employees of him.

And then a third woman who said she was his client and also experienced the same sexual harassment.

And then, of course, he went on to become elected.

So he kind of just continued to climb the ranks, became elected.

And for two years, his employees had been complaining to the County about retaliation, bullying.

You know, it's kind of the same pattern of behavior.

And the County did not take any action until Jeff's first story came out, in which they announced that they would have this independent contractor, you know, put in that office to try to mediate everything, which could have been done prior to Jeff's story.

-And again, these are all allegations.

But what stood out to me from your reporting is that you had to continue keeping some of the sources anonymous because they were so afraid of him still being in jail, and what if he possibly gets out?

Did you want to add something, Kats, or you just had your hand up?

-Oh, no.

I'm just following along, but I totally am with you.

-All right.

So he remains in jail without bail, and his trial is set for April.

I want to move now to Nevada politics.

April, on that beat, what was the biggest story or stories this year for you?

-Obviously, it's the Midterm Elections.

It was a big year, and it sort of defined the entire thing.

And I think there were a lot of interesting stories that came out of it.

I mean primarily over, looking at nationally, the party that's in power typically doesn't do well during the Midterm Elections.

It's kind of a rebuff to people being upset about their policies, and we didn't see that happen at the national level.

The Democrats control-- They kept control of the Senate and sort of had minor losses in the House, which is sort of unprecedented.

I think it was in 19-- Or 1922 was the last time, sort of, the political party in power lost less than 10 seats in the House before.

So this is sort of unprecedented in modern politics.

And Nevada was a part of that nationally, where all three of our Democratic House Representatives held their seat, despite being in competitive districts.

And then Catherine Cortez Masto, who was called the most vulnerable Senator in the country, held off a challenge from Adam Laxalt.

So I think we're sort of part of that narrative.

At the same time, we saw the only incumbent governor to not win reelection.

And so we kicked out the Democrat, and we voted in Republican Joe Lombardo.

So we kind of-- It kind of shows how Nevada really is a wild west of politics and kind of interesting and not exactly predictable, perhaps, depending on who you talk to.

So I think that's sort of what we've seen.

And definitely the rejection of, sort of, election denialism and really hardcore Trump candidates is something we also saw, where the people who were the most extreme candidates on the Republican side didn't do well in Nevada.

But then you had more moderate candidates like Joe Lombardo win.

So that's kind of the big narrative that we've seen.

And that'll definitely shape, I think, where the Republican Party specifically needs to go here in Nevada to find success.

-As you mentioned, Nevada is going to have a Republican governor in 2023.

And, Howard, he's going to be inheriting an economy that is bolstered by some good gaming revenue.

What is the status there for 2022?

-It's interesting.

I was thinking about this when we were getting ready for the show.

You go back in the height of the pandemic in 2020, and every analyst in the country that looks at gaming numbers said, Las Vegas, the Strip, we will be the last to recover in the-- once everything opens up again with the pandemic.

How wrong they were is the real way to look at it.

Last year Nevada had 13.4 billion in gaming revenue, highest number ever.

The Strip was almost 7.1 billion.

By October, it was looking like we're gonna break it in November; when the November numbers come out, we'll have broken those records again.

So it comes down to a pent up demand; people were wanting to come to Vegas and were spending money.

But the other things are lagging.

Tourism on the Strip still lagged behind the 2019 prepandemic totals, and they just started to uptick a little bit in October.

But at the same time, we're seeing the highest hotel-- The average daily hotel room rate ever on the Strip, I think it was like in October $210 or $215 a night.

That was amazing.

People were paying that.

So and we still don't have the international, the volume of international travel, and our convention business is still somewhat lagging.

Now, a lot of that's gonna change next year with the convention business.

The big question will be is, okay, are the gaming numbers going to continue?

You know, we've had 20 straight months of a billion dollars or more in gaming revenue for the state of Nevada.

Will that continue in 2023?

There's gonna be some tough comparisons when you compare 2023 to 2022.

So we'll just see how this goes.

But the thing was, it proved everybody-- Vegas proved everybody wrong, all the analysts wrong in 2020.

And the Strip came roaring back different, you know, a little different; but it seems to be back where, you know, we'll see how things move forward in 2023.

-Nevada's economy as a whole, I'm going to ask you about that in a little bit, April, but 2022 also saw the announcement of Formula 1 coming to Las Vegas in November 2023.

And Howard wrote that in the 24 hours after that announcement, quote, ...when Las Vegas and Encore saw more requests for hotel room reservations than any other one day period in the Strip properties' history.

-And if you look at that now and the room rate, now that they put the rooms on the market, I mean, they were getting $1,500, $1,600 a night on the Strip for these rooms.

What is the win?

The win weekend where you can spend a million dollars and get two suites, or-- It's a big money crowd coming in for Formula 1 next year.

And it'll be interesting how, how it-- what it does with the market.

You know closing down the Strip is one thing, we do that on New Year's Eve, but not in the sense where you get a lot of people on the Strip and they can walk up and down the Strip.

I mean it's going to be closed down because your gonna have some high-performance vehicles racing down it.

So it'll be-- It's gonna be a big attention grab for Las Vegas in next year, and we'll see how that does in terms of visitation and consumer spending.

-Steve, from your perspective, the announcement of Formula 1, where does that rank among all the big stories we've had in sports this year?

-I would say it's one of the biggest ones, the world's richest sport embracing Vegas.

It's another one of those watershed moments.

I think, like, the NHL coming here, which opened things up, you know, Bill Foley and the NHL embracing Vegas was a gigantic deal to kind of reduce the fear of sports gambling with the other leagues.

And I mean, you saw shortly after F1 dropped and the NCAA, which has been the most staunch against Las Vegas, now announced that, you know, 2028 Final Four eventually, you know, national title game with whatever format they're gonna come up with here.

So F1 is gigantic.

And then, you know, just from a construction and investment standpoint, I mean, all the roads around the Strip, you know, Koval and that investment at Harmon and Koval, 200 plus million dollars.

So it's a massive sports store.

-Speaking of the Strip, the Las Vegas Aces were able to shut down a portion of it because of their national win, the first major league pro sports team in Las Vegas to win a national title.

How significant, Steve?

-I think it's gigantic for women's sports.

We'll see where it goes from here.

If ticket buying increases during the playoffs, the home games they were drawing, you know, eight, nine, ten thousand.

So that's good.

But we'll see if the economics catch up.

I don't think they're ever gonna get paid the same amount as NBA players, but WNBA players certainly deserve their fair share of the money, and I think this is going to help.

I think the fact that it's Vegas and we did it up so glitzy and that parade turned out a really nice crowd, and the way they did it was impressive.

I think it's gonna help the entire WNBA, and it puts a lot of pressure on the NBA to get their act together here and stop paying a pittance of their money.

I mean, this is a multibillion dollar league.

The women deserve money.

The league deserves the investment.

-Kats, sports and entertainment often overlap.

You wrote about the ACES parade, reminiscent of the Running Rebels parade, -Yeah, that was when-- The last time they shut down the Strip for Hoops was then.

And I talked to Becky Hammon of all places at the Great Santa Run a few weeks ago.

I saw her there, the coach of the Aces.

And I saw her and I said, You have arrived when you get to come to the Great Santa Run.

It's a team-- -Is that a status symbol here?

[laughter] -I think so.

She seemed to take it that way.

When you see a few thousand people in Santa costumes, you know, you're definitely in a different strata of life.

She was-- It was really good.

It seems to me that the Aces, and maybe the league as a whole, but certainly the Aces, even though they're the champions, are still kind of trying to fight for respect.

They had to play their first two games on the road after winning the championship.

They're not going to get their rings until May.

And I asked her about this.

I go, You guys are the league leaders, in fact, in the WNBA, and yet you're still having to-- You can't play your home-- your opener, your season opener, on your home facility.

You're not going to get your rings and that.

And she goes, Yeah, you know, I've thought a lot about that.

But I'd like my team a little ticked off.

[laughter] We seem to play better, and that's really what it's all about.

And I go, Okay, did you try to initiate the schedule yourself?

[laughter] But it's great to have them here.

And I know that, you know, I appreciate Mark Davis' interest in the Aces.

He had, not only did he sit on courtside, but he eventually bought the team.

That's how interested he was in the Aces.

So yeah, there's money to be had, and there's entertainment to be had.

They've definitely done a great job of folding the entertainment into their game experiences.

All the pro teams have in Las Vegas; they tap right into it.

They know where to find entertainers, whether it's production shows or headliners.

It's a great-- It's fun, man.

Aces games are great.

-I think the other big thing that comes out of the Aces winning a championship is empowering female voices.

And they've got some voices on that team.

Kelsey Plum and A'ja Wilson, who want to speak up, want to speak on lots of issues.

They've been very strong.

The league has, and especially the women I mentioned, talking about Brittney Griner.

There's a heck of a pushback right now on Brittney Griner.

There's a lot of toxic masculinity, if I can use that term.

So many males out there either jealous of women, don't like female sports.

So the fact that they won a title there in Vegas, they can-- They can be louder than they've ever been before and gain respect and speak on more issues.

And the league also needs that because Sue Bird is moving on.

You've got some other veteran players who they built the league around; and now the Aces have some players to, the league can kind of turn to for important issues where they can speak up.

-Yeah, you don't find that Mark Davis is trying to shut any of their voices down.

But then you've got on the other side, some of the interesting reporting that you've done, Briana, about the Raiders.

Mark Davis also the owner of the Raiders.

One of the stories you did was titled, "How a Boys' Club, Raiders Culture Fueled Turnover, Lawsuits, and Harassment Claims."

What did you take away from your reporting on that?

-Yeah.

Well, first off, there were, you know, a series of high-profile exits from the executive team.

And a lot of those-- The interim president, Dan Ventrelle, had said, Oh, I got fired because I reported these claims to the NFL.

I ended up finding, you know, some lawsuits dating back to when they were in Oakland and here in Las Vegas and some of the former employees who said that this culture had kind of been going on for many years.

And the HR team had turned over three times in two years, and only one of them made it out to Las Vegas.

And I guess the takeaway there was, a lot of the women just felt like they were being harassed.

They were singled out for what they were wearing, because it was a boys' atmosphere.

There was retaliation if they spoke up about their concerns.

And, you know, it was women that were demoted or underpaid.

The cheerleaders famously had been underpaid and won a class action lawsuit, you know, previously.

So my take-away was, you know, just what those women had said they felt.

And after our story ran, you know, Mark Davis announced that they were hiring the first African American woman to run the-- to be president of the NFL team, which was a major step.

And she's since said she's looking to hire a Director of Diversity and Inclusion, and she's looking to turn things around.

So we will see what's in store for the Raiders now under her leadership.

-All right.

And he never specifically responded to those allegations in your report, right, Mark Davis?

-No, he never did.

He said he would address it at some point.

And then he kind of announced the woman that he hired, Miss Sandra Douglass Morgan.

-Right.

-Yeah.

-I didn't get to ask you, Kats, the biggest entertainment story of the year for you.

-I would-- I think it's the prominence of Allegiant Stadium and how it's stepped up and taken on some of the stadium and arena tours.

You know, the-- Las Vegas, for all of its qualities, did not have that before Allegiant Stadium consistently.

You'd have once in a while, you'd have a YouTube playing Sam Boyd Stadium, but you didn't really have the big acts making a Las Vegas stop a priority.

But it is the number one entertainment stadium in the world, according to Billboard last year.

That's SoFi Stadium and international soccer facilities and, you know, Mexico City and everywhere.

And so we saw that, beginning with Garth Brooks selling out, BTS selling out four times, Bad Bunny, Metallica.

It was a lot.

And it's just going to become more prominent.

And, you know, I was wondering too, Howard mentioned how we were going to come back, you know, if Las Vegas was going to be at the head of the class or behind the trend.

And when I went to that Garth Brooks show, it was evident that people were really ready to experience live entertainment at a great scale in Las Vegas in that building.

So I think as we move forward, I think Allegiant Stadium is going to be getting-- The one example happens to have been Taylor Swift, Are we going to get a Taylor Swift show, when they were going to break ground at Allegiant Stadium.

I went to the groundbreaking of Allegiant Stadium, and that was the topic, is like, Are we gonna get Taylor Swift?

We know we're gonna get the Raiders.

We got Taylor Swift who apparently doesn't like playing Las Vegas that much previously, but she's-- And wiped out the place, two shows, to great consequence.

And I've been talking to people in the industry.

She could have played six shows at Allegiant Stadium and sold them out.

That's how high the demand is.

So it is a big deal.

It's an international leader in live entertainment.

And that's apart from the Raiders and the UNLV football team, because they're the host of that, too.

-To kind of follow up on what John said, this is what was promised when there was the whole debate about building, you know, Allegiant Stadium.

It was controversial because 750 million in public money-- -Right.

- --went to, room tax money, went to build Allegiant Stadium.

And this is why, in some ways, not BTS-- But gaming numbers have gone up because of all the events there at Allegiant Stadium.

I mean, you-- I've been to a couple of Raider games, you-- The crowds coming in and out and, you know, onto the Strip along where Mandalay Bay and Luxor sit.

It's brought more people to Vegas.

I went-- One time I looked around in the parking lot, all California plates, for the Raiders games.

So it has done what the promise was that it would bring, you know, a different market, bring a different market to Vegas, bring more customers to Vegas.

That seems to be what it's done.

-I hate to cut you off.

Real quickly, the state of Nevada's economy, April?

-Yeah.

I mean, part of it leads into that where we've seen, like Howard said, just record gaming numbers, which they expected sort of level off at some point.

But what they've talked about in economic meetings is they kind of see that as the new normal, possibly because of Allegiant Stadium, sort of, and all of these new things.

And Nevada and Las Vegas continue to grow.

So we've seen that, but really, the-- You know, the latest budget projections for the next biennium, the next two years, is like $11.4 billion.

That's over $2 billion more than the budget that was approved for the current biennium that we're in.

And that just shows you how absolutely unprecedented our recovery has been over the last, over the last two years and where we're going.

-Thank you all for joining us for this panel.

And thank you for watching Nevada Week, not just this edition, but all year long.

And from all of us here at Vegas PBS, have a safe and very happy new year.

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