Sheldon Adelson has been unmasked because the new owner for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, having been exposed by the newspaper that is very had anonymously purchased a week earlier.

As reported here early in the day this week, LVRJ staff were puzzled and a little dismayed to master Thursday that is last that newspaper had been sold to a mystery owner for $140 million.

All they were told was that the newly incorporated company, News + Media Capital Group, was now during the helm and they ought to ask no more questions.

‘They want one to focus on your jobs … don’t be concerned about whom they’re,’ was the pep talk provided by one Michael Schroeder, a News + Media Capital Group supervisor during the very first staff meeting under the ownership that is new.

And while Schroeder assured staff that their editorial self-reliance would not be compromised by their new mystery owner, a front web page story on the sale that evening was redacted at Schroeder’s request to get rid of sources to the proprietor’s anonymity.

Calls for Transparency

It was not just LVRJ’s people who had been alarmed, as other journalists began calling for transparency too, and the whole tale spread as speculation expanded. The sale of a newspaper to an owner or organization that refuses to be identified is unprecedented in media history as Esther Thorson, research director for the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, told the Los Angeles Times.

Moreover, the premium price paid by the buyer suggested they were enthusiastic about buying clout that is political rather than a considered financial investment, which made all of it the more crucial that their identity and affiliations be disclosed.

The fact that LVRJ is the dominant media outlet in the swing that is early-voting of Nevada suggested to numerous that the buyer might be a wealthy conservative, and Adelson’s name began to be cited by speculative commentators.

Public Statement

Meanwhile, confronted with a conundrum, RJ staff did what good journalists do: they started digging for answers. Or as Schroeder had put it, they ‘focused on their jobs.’

Sources ultimately revealed that Patrick Dumont, Adelson’s son-in-law and vice that is senior of finance and strategy at Las Vegas Sands Corporation, had brokered the deal between News + Media Capital Group and its particular previous owner, brand New Media Investment Group.

‘He [Dumont] handles all the investments for the family,’ claimed a source that is lvrj.

For all of the LVRJ staff knew, they might have been risking their jobs by printing the story, but that doesn’t look like the scenario. Instead, the Adelson family made a formal statement of the ownership of the newsprint just hours after the tale broke.

One journalist that is such current LVRJ columnist John L. Smith, whose 8-year-old daughter ended up being suffering from mind cancer tumors at the time of the litigation. His daughter ultimately survived, but Smith was pushed into bankruptcy.

Adelson eventually agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice, after Smith’s attorney successfully argued that the case was not about defamation, but about Adelson making an example of people who crossed him.

The suit was at response to a probing book that included information Adelson had considered defamatory, instead of any such thing Smith had written at the Review-Journal. It are going to be interesting to see how that relationship unfolds with this specific saga that is new.