One strange announcement

I first saw this last night as an electronic press release. Today, it’s a news story on the Las Vegas Sun’s website.

Press release … news story … meh. No matter how you cut it, it is one strange announcement.

In breathless, cheesey-movie-announcer style, it says that on Feb. 9 the Greenspun Media Group will launch a “groundbreaking publication — The Sunday, a free weekly news publication serving the Las Vegas metropolitan area.”

If it must say so itself (and believe me, it must), the Greenspun press release/news story (PRNS for short) goes on to most humbly say that it will be “thought-provoking, informative, graphically rich, lively and fun.”

There are a lot of reasons and moving parts for this move by the Greenspuns. Some of them are described in the PRNS. Some are conspicuously missing.

Let’s just stick to the obvious.

This new weekly publication is “groundbreaking,” “innovative,” “thought-provoking,” “informative,” “fun,” “profound” and “playful.”

Truth is, it can’t be any of those things until it actually is.

But perhaps the most telling line in the PRNS comes when it tells readers to “imagine a Time or Newsweek but entirely focused on local topics.”

They read my mind.

When it comes to the media track record of the Las Vegas Sun and the Greenspuns, the success of Time and Newsweek are exactly what I think of.

You can read the innovative, groundbreaking, lively and fun PRNS here.