MEDIA MAGNET
Source: Las Vegas Review - Journal (Original Article)
Last month, the Wall Street Journal immortalized Jim Gibbons with one of its trademark ink dot portraits.
Unfortunately for Gibbons, the story that went with it was nothing he would want to clip out and add to his scrapbook.
Despite pleas for privacy, the governor and his mansion-sized marital problems have gone global.
In the last week alone, the ongoing saga has spurred stories in People Magazine and two major daily newspapers in London.
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star, and the Deseret Morning News of Salt Lake City also have carried news of the governor’s alleged affair and pending divorce.
The widening coverage comes as no surprise to one man who has made a career out of gleefully spreading gossip.
“In the world of clean, healthy gossip, if you’re a chef this has all the ingredients,” said celebrity maven and Las Vegas resident Robin Leach. “It’s got everything: sex, lust, avarice and a government official to boot.”
He expects the frenzy to intensify in the wake of Tuesday’s revelation that Gibbons used his state-issued phone to send more than 860 text messages in six weeks to another man’s wife.
“This guy must own the speed championship title. He must be the fastest texter in the world,” Leach said. “You couldn’t write this stuff. A script writer in Hollywood wouldn’t touch it because no one would believe it.”
But is this a bigger story across the country and around the world simply because it is happening in Nevada?
State Archivist Guy Rocha isn’t so sure.
Nevada and its laissez faire ideas about marriage, divorce, gambling and prostitution might give coverage “a little boost,” Rocha said, but a story like this would still make news “even in Bismarck, North Dakota.”
Leach agreed.
“If this had happened in Britain to the village priest or the local mayor, it would have jigsaw been front page news everywhere,” he …continue reading