Bruce Spotleson

Story Archive

A look ahead from the realm of the paranormal: Monday, Jan. 30, 2012; This is my last column of January, the month of renewed optimism, energized hope, calculated predictions and sober projections.
Suburban cities adapt amid economic uncertainty: Monday, Jan. 23, 2012; Back when things were really booming here — you remember those days — a trip from Henderson to North Las Vegas was something you often had to plan your day around. Gridlock ensued on Interstate 15 most weekday afternoons, usually spoiling even the best of Outlook calendars.
After the holiday lull, it's time to get back to business: Monday, Jan. 16, 2012; The most positive aspect of any new year is the optimism it brings. But it also seems to energize a business community — and just in time. After the annual business lull of December, things are starting to happen again.
If you'd only asked, I would have told you ...: Monday, Jan. 9, 2012; It’s a new year, which means it’s time to clear out the files. So let’s see how many unconnected topics we can cover in 750 words:
The new DUI: It’s time for distracted drivers to wise up: Monday, Jan. 2, 2012; Combined with the bucks spent by the gloomy Chad Golightly, the dour Adam Kutner, the stoic Ed Bernstein, and a gaggle of others aspiring to become scene-of-the accident household names, local ad spending by personal injury lawyers amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for TV affiliates. Maybe more.
Brookings study serves as a guide — if we let it: Monday, Dec. 19, 2011; Pardon me if this sounds shallow, but my first reaction to the new Brookings Institution-SRI International “Economic Development Agenda for Nevada” was that someone probably should have let a newspaper editor work it over before releasing it to the public.
Catching up with Tainter and Harsch: Monday, Dec. 12, 2011; If there’s anything that recent times have taught us, it’s that when you sit down with someone who’s in real estate, you probably shouldn’t open a conversation with a traditional question.
Scott Muelrath plays a new role in Henderson: Monday, Dec. 5, 2011; When the morning arrived for my breakfast with Scott Muelrath, I intended to dazzle him with tales of my fishing adventures.
Author's lessons in leadership are timeless: Monday, Nov. 28, 2011; Long ago but not far away, an aspiring young executive was in a large company that demanded its future leaders read books if they ever wanted to be considered for promotion. Because all the company’s young managers wanted that opportunity, they prepared by reading everything they could about management and leadership.
Commerce doesn't seem dull to JA youth: Monday, Nov. 21, 2011; The business world is usually more appealing to grown-ups than kids, and that’s why it’s always interesting to attend a Junior Achievement event. The young people at these gatherings never talk about business as though it’s boring or just for adults.
A place to act out while raising money: Monday, Nov. 14, 2011; If you like Halloween and authentic local events, show up next year for the Boneyard Bash, a fundraiser for the Neon Museum. The first one was held in the historic Fremont East District on Oct. 28. Amidst the eclectic crowd were some elaborate costumes. Or, at least, I hope they were costumes.
When a banking executive takes the podium: Monday, Nov. 7, 2011; Their industry has certainly been racked the past few years — along with the rest of the world — so banking execs might be excused if they want to avoid microphones for a while.
'Host Committee' initiative captivates Goodman — and others: Monday, Oct. 31, 2011; I took some notes at events in the past couple of weeks. Now, if I can just decipher them.
A tale of two people who moved to Las Vegas from Florida: Monday, Oct. 24, 2011; One day a couple of weeks ago, I was sorting through messages in our general e-mailbox, where one in particular stood out.
Pat Mulroy always gets an audience's attention: Monday, Oct. 17, 2011; You can almost always count on Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy for great quotes, and she delivered as expected at the Oct. 6 meeting of the Water Conservation Coalition at South Point.
Cooler weather coincides with busier schedule: Monday, Oct. 10, 2011; The triple-digit days are thankfully gone at last — on the morning I’m writing this, at least. This time of year, local Outlook calendars have been filling up fast.
Musings: Touching the bases, in no particular order; Monday, Oct. 3, 2011; Emptying out the Reporter’s Notebook and all the disjointed notes jotted in it:
Getting Away: It’s not easy to get away nowadays, but your inbox will wait; Monday, Sept. 19, 2011; Everywhere I looked, a message needed attention.
CSN adjusts to new financial reality: Monday, July 25, 2011; Like my many media brethren, I’ve encountered a lot of different definitions of “news” over the years.
Bruce Spotleson: VEGAS INC scores well in first data reports: For us, too much information isn’t possible.; Monday, July 11, 2011; It’s a maxim established centuries ago: To be successful in business, you have to know what the customer wants. Because we’re basically a reflection of our audience’s interests, it’s a long-accepted principle in the world of media.
Bruce Spotleson: Sorting out Las Vegas' recycling system: A user’s unforgettable experience at a Las Vegas recycling center.; Tuesday, July 5, 2011; We may be more digitally inclined these days, but the publishing industry still uses a lot of paper in serving its readers and advertisers. And just like you, we enjoy products from plastic, glass and aluminum containers throughout the course of the day. Together, these four ingredients form the bulk of recyclable materials.
Bruce Spotleson: Summer in Vegas is no time for suits and ties: Sartorial common sense wins when it’s summer in the desert.; Monday, June 27, 2011; It’s already 92 degrees outside when you begin to think about what you’ll be wearing on this workday. Women are not alone in that challenge, you know, although men don’t seem to go through the whole shoes thing.
Bruce Spotleson: Southern Nevadans are every bit as local as we’re global: At Sports Hall of Fame dinner, the ‘other’ Las Vegas is center stage.; Monday, June 20, 2011; The first real warm weather had arrived, just right for celebrating the two sides of Las Vegas: The glamorously global and the intimately local.
Bruce Spotleson: Like every other city, Phoenix has its issues, too: Wait just a second: Let’s not put Phoenix on a pedestal.; Monday, June 13, 2011; Timing is everything in the news business. What makes headlines one day is so often dullsville the next. Good or bad, it’s something you understand in this business.
Bruce Spotleson: Defining Local: Here’s the sure-fire way to tell if you’re truly one of us.; Monday, June 6, 2011; It’s time for a brief checklist on how to tell if you’re a local.
Bruce Spotleson: Happy and alert? You gotta give credit to a certain morning potion: Monday, May 30, 2011; It’s another Monday, and I am focused on one thing as I enter the office, en route to an assignation with a 4-foot-10 office acquaintance known to me only by its maker’s name of Saeco.
Bruce Spotleson: Awards provide much needed boost to business community: Monday, May 23, 2011; Why do we like award programs? There’s a very good reason. Having been in this business for a while now, I’ve gathered plenty of testimony about the positive force the media can have in society.
Bruce Spotleson: Effective delegation is key to management: There’s a management lesson in the Osama Bin Laden mission.; Monday, May 16, 2011; People often say that business is war, and in recent years, there have been plenty of popular books and articles playing to this analogy.
Bruce Spotleson: Journalists are the same breed they've always been: In many ways, we’re like your company. But not exactly.; Monday, May 9, 2011; There are a lot of moving parts in the average business organization, but also a lot of moving people. As any smart leader knows, a mission statement alone isn’t enough to ensure they’ll work in unison.
Bruce Spotleson: Our education system is caught up in communication issues: When it comes to funding schools, the challenge is in perceptions.; Monday, May 2, 2011; Even though Clark County’s school system is at risk, citizens don’t go to bat for education as they have in other states recently.
Bruce Spotleson: Advertising industry is bouncing back: In my world, we have our own ways of measuring a recovery.; Monday, April 25, 2011; We’re all so easily distracted when Spring arrives in our desert, but also thankful that our local commerce rarely stops for nice weather. We wouldn’t want anything to interrupt our recovery, or to interfere with the trace of a pulse in our economy.
Bruce Spotleson: New museum revives Las Vegas' mob history: A night full of Italian-American memories at the Mob Experience.; Monday, April 18, 2011; Not long ago, one of our other sister magazines carried a feature about being born and raised here. It was a popular piece, mostly because natives are so hard to find.
Bruce Spotleson: Kruger brought new life to UNLV basketball: Solid UNLV hoops program is marketable, even for wild Las Vegas.; Monday, April 11, 2011; It’s easy to recite the formula for promoting tourism here: It’s all about our selection of gaming, shopping, entertainment and dining choices. Come have fun in Las Vegas.
Bruce Spotleson: Reinvention: Let me ask you this: Who ever said trying to be great is easy? Not us.; Monday, April 4, 2011; When USA TODAY first began in 1982, a lot of veteran newspaper and magazine journalists across the nation refused to take it seriously. Pointing to its shorter news stories and formula layout, they sarcastically dubbed it “McPaper,” a pejorative referring to certain negatives associated with fast food production.
For the love of meatballs: Friday, Nov. 19, 2010; It started off as a casual hallway conversation, two co-workers reminiscing about the food we had grown up eating in separate Italian-American households. Being men, though, we found a way to get competitive about it.
Catching up with Richard Lee/i: Friday, Oct. 29, 2010; Few people personified our famed commercial real estate boom the way he did. And when values were soaring to unbelievable heights locally, an adoring public just couldn’t get enough of Richard Lee.
A midsummer night's stream: Friday, Sept. 17, 2010; It had been a long and hot summer, simmering with bitter political divisions and desperation over the economy. But as summers so often do, it was passing too quickly.
Getting along on social media: Friday, Aug. 27, 2010; They’ve taken a pounding in the last few years, but the print media continue to make a large footprint in our world.
Body language: The truth so often unspoken: To get people’s full message, a Las Vegas expert asserts, you need to really look at them, not just listen to their words; Monday, Aug. 2, 2010; Sitting across from Jack Brown, it’s easy to become self-conscious about your every move. It can’t be helped. Brown, an ophthalmologist by education, is something of an expert in body language.
Phoenix, just around the corner: Friday, June 25, 2010; Long drives can be therapeutic, and at the end of one particularly crazy recent week, I gathered what remained of my wits and embarked on the 4 1/2 hour drive to Phoenix, the city of my childhood.
The path we followed: Friday, June 11, 2010; It seems like only last month, but it was more than a decade ago that we sat down in our conference room to hear a presentation by celebrity researcher Frank Luntz.
Low taxes, low expectations?: Friday, April 30, 2010; When business speaks, America listens. The evidence is all around us.
The recession is over: Friday, April 2, 2010; You read it here first: Things are getting better. Brighter times are upon us. The recession is over. Done. See ya.
Locals remain a unique species: Friday, March 19, 2010; As we’ve been reminded this winter, tourism is not a small part of our economy. All financial roads lead to it, from it and around it — at least until such time as a few more industries begin to share the rent. And we watch it like hawks.
A variety of random thoughts: Friday, Feb. 19, 2010; Time to clear out the reporter’s notebook, and all the random notes scribbled into it:
Choosing words in this economy: Friday, Jan. 29, 2010; It was at the North Las Vegas’ State of the City luncheon Jan. 21 at Texas Station that a longtime business associate walked up and shook my hand with a familiar question.
“How’s business?” he said.
For two strong leaders, a transition: Friday, Jan. 15, 2010; Every so often, a female colleague will remind me of how certain things work in the inland West.
New and old inside of a week: Friday, Dec. 11, 2009; Its very name has been a part of our everyday vocabulary for a couple of years now, a trademark that evolved into a metaphor for an anxious community’s hopes and dreams.
For too many, red means go: Friday, June 19, 2009; It was just a couple of years ago that cops and reporters gathered at Rainbow Boulevard and Craig Road. Although police and journalists don’t always play nice together, on this occasion — a news conference to announce an awareness-raising campaign — they were partners.
A brief foray on the commercial side: Friday, May 29, 2009; One of the less tangible benefits of any job is its intellectual stimulation.