A Newspaper in Las Vegas, at Risk of Closing, Divides a Family

Ronda Churchill for The New York TimesRic Anderson, center, the managing editor of The Las Vegas Sun, speaking to Brian Greenspun, its editor and publisher.

Tanned and fit, collar unbuttoned and no socks under his loafers, Brian Greenspun, the president of The Las Vegas Sun, stood in the middle of the newsroom, surrounded by $500 Herman Miller chairs, flat-screen monitors and floor-to-ceiling third-story windows offering an unmatched view of the Las Vegas Strip.

The Henderson, Nev., newsroom of The Las Vegas Sun, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009.

It was June 2005. Mr. Greenspun, whose family has owned the paper since his parents founded it in 1950, told dozens of reporters and editors that the joint operating agreement between The Sun and its more conservative rival, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, had been amended: The Sun would become the first daily in the country to be delivered inside its competitor, as if it were a separate section.

Despite the skepticism of some staff members that day, the newspaper was able to attract top journalists from across the country, resulting in national awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2009. But the financial downturn, particularly harsh in Nevada, pummeled the paper, and dozens of longtime employees were laid off.

And now, the paper itself might disappear. Stephens Media, owner of The Review-Journal, wants to dissolve the joint agreement, intended to preserve newspapers. In exchange, the Greenspun family would receive the domain name lasvegas.com, a Web site the family currently leases from Stephens for up to $2.5 million a year and then subleases to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Mr. Greenspun’s brother, Danny Greenspun, and two sisters, Susan Greenspun Fine and Jane Greenspun Gale, all voted to accept the offer, but Brian wants to fight. Last month, he accused his siblings of “deciding to kill The Las Vegas Sun,” and he is suing Stephens, claiming that the offer gives The Review-Journal a local monopoly over news gathering and opinion.

At stake, he says, is Las Vegas’s future as a two-newspaper town. Doing away with the joint operating agreement “is equivalent to buying The Sun and shutting it down,” he said, adding of his siblings, “It’s a business deal to them.”

The dispute is the latest twist in the outsize history of the Greenspuns and Las Vegas. While there are better-known publishing families in the United States, few are more colorful.

Hank Greenspun started the paper with his wife, Barbara, after working as a publicist for the gangster Bugsy Siegel. In the 1940s, he was convicted of running guns to the paramilitary group that would become the Israeli Defense Forces. (He was fined, never jailed and later pardoned by President John F. Kennedy.) In the ensuing decades, he helped end segregation on the Strip, developed an 8,000-acre master-planned community and brought cable television to Las Vegas. He was also revealed to be a proposed target of the Watergate burglars. The Greenspun name is on schools, clinics and colleges.

The Sun first came to prominence in the 1950s for its opposition to Senator Patrick McCarran’s red-baiting tactics. (Hank Greenspun was also a vociferous opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy.) It continued to be a liberal voice amid the city’s dizzying growth, but by the time of Hank Greenspun’s death in 1989, the paper was losing millions. Within months, the joint agreement was created, but circulation continued to slide. By 2005, when the deal was revised, The Sun had fewer than 30,000 readers and essentially became a 6- to 10-page insert with no advertising.

On that day in 2005, Mr. Greenspun assured the 75 or so staff members that the deal would let the paper reinvest in journalism. In 2009, the paper won the industry’s highest honor, a Pulitzer Prize, for a series about construction deaths on the Strip.

But as the economy staggered, many of those same journalists were laid off or left. The paper once received as much as $12 million a year in profit-sharing through the joint agreement and now receives $1.3 million. Last month, the Greenspuns voted to dissolve the partnership.

None of the other Greenspun siblings would discuss the case. Brian Greenspun maintains that the deal violates antitrust laws. “In every antitrust violation, there’s always been at least two parties who combine based on it being a good business decision,” he said. His lawyers include Leif Reid, son of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, another prominent family in Nevada and long supported by The Sun.

But Donald Campbell, outside counsel for Stephens, said: “We believe his beef is with the wrong people. He is a dissident shareholder. The problem he has is with his own family.” Mr. Campbell also said the offer did not include a noncompete clause, so the Greenspuns, or anyone else, would face no legal obstacle in continuing to print The Sun. Mr. Greenspun contends that the costs to do so would be prohibitive.

China Divides European Union in Fight Over Tariffs

HONG KONG — Adroitly alternating the threat of a trade war with the lure of its huge import market, China appears to have driven a deep wedge between Germany and the rest of the European Union. And it may even have caused a rift within the German business world.

As Chinese and European trade officials stare each other down over next week’s scheduled imposition of big tariffs on the $27 billion worth of solar panels China sells to Europe each year, Germany has come down on China’s side.

Notably, Berlin is backing Beijing, even though Europe’s biggest producer of solar equipment, SolarWorld, is a German company that desperately wants the European Union to impose tariffs on the Chinese equipment. Unless the bloc backs off under German pressure, tariffs of up to 50 percent would go into effect June 5, to punish China for the ostensible “dumping” of solar panels at below cost in Europe.

“Europe cannot succumb to blackmail — dumping is illegal, and the E.U. is obliged to defend itself by applying the international trade law,” said Milan Nitzschke, a spokesman for SolarWorld and the president of ProSun, a lobbying group for the European solar energy industry.

But many other German companies, which rely more heavily than other European manufacturers on China as a significant market for their exports — whether Volkswagen cars or Siemens factory equipment or various other goods — fear that the dispute over solar panels could lead to an all-out trade war with China, which would be disastrous for their businesses. So far, the German government appears to agree.

And little wonder. Germany is China’s most important trading partner in Europe and China is Germany’s leading partner in Asia. The Federation of German Industry estimates that one million German jobs are dependent on exports to China. Of those, the German solar industry has about 99,000.

For half a century, Germany has been one of the most loyal and enthusiastic supporters of European unity. And since the advent of the European Union in 1992, Berlin has advocated giving Brussels greater scope in the range of issues it handles. But the solar tariff showdown illustrates the way domestic priorities can sometimes trump pan-European loyalties.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany played host last weekend to Prime Minister Li Keqiang of China. More than a dozen trade agreements were signed, including between VW, Siemens, BASF and their Chinese partners, all supporting further expansion for German industry in the Chinese market and further investment by the Chinese in Germany. Special privileges that China offered German companies in its agricultural and recycling industries were clearly aimed at trying to win Berlin’s support.

After her meeting with Mr. Li, Ms. Merkel told reporters on Sunday that her government would lobby against the solar tariffs, saying the situation was “rather complicated.”

“Germany will do everything possible to resolve the conflicts that we have in trade,” Ms. Merkel said, “through as many discussions as possible to prevent it from falling into a sort of conflict that ends in the raising of tariffs from both sides.”

Germany’s economics minister, Philipp Rösler, said Monday that Germany had told the European Commission in Brussels that it was voting against the imposition of preliminary tariffs on Chinese solar panels. While the commission routinely consults member countries on preliminary tariffs, in the past that has tended to be more of a formality, and opposition has been infrequent.

But on Tuesday, a trade official in Europe with direct knowledge of the matter said it appeared that a majority of the governments were officially opposed to preliminary tariffs on Chinese solar imports. And yet, the European commissioner for trade, Karel De Gucht, could still go ahead on June 5 and impose the preliminary duties without any further approvals. That deadline was established at the opening of the commission’s investigation in September.

Whether Mr. De Gucht proceeds with the preliminary duties remains to be seen. But he “will not be intimidated in any way” and “will not bend to external pressure,” Mr. De Gucht’s spokesman, John Clancy, said at the commission’s daily news conference Tuesday.

Preliminary tariffs, which would last six months, in the past have tended to be imposed as a negotiating ploy before the European Commission decides whether to impose so-called final tariffs that last for five years. A voting majority of member nations could overturn the preliminary tariffs, although such a move would be unprecedented.

Melissa Eddy reported from Berlin. James Kanter contributed reporting from Brussels and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong.