Michael Hart

The New Yorker Meets Sheldon Adelson
July 9, 2008

The one and only time I interviewed Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., in January 2005, he put his portable tape recorder on the table next to mine and turned his on at the same time I did mine.

I assume I got the story right, because I never heard otherwise.

At the time, I wasn’t that concerned. However, after reading a 12,000-word story about Adelson in the June 30 issue of The New Yorker, maybe I should have been.

Twelve thousand words is a lot, even for The New Yorker, but for me and many Tradeshow Week readers, it’s a real page-turner. Most of the story has to do with Adelson’s very intense and very, very expensive efforts to influence Israeli politics.

Still, there is plenty of space devoted to the birth and sale of Comdex, the development of the Sands and Venetian (according to this story, he personally selected the tassels for all the curtains in the place), and the way in which the Macau opportunity came his way. Jason Chudnofsky, one-time Adelson lieutenant and more recently CEO of the now-dissolved-into-thin-air pulvermedia, is even quoted at length (one of only a handful whose remarks were bravely attributed).

Tradeshow industry veterans already will know many of the stories or, at the very least, be able to verify what may have before sounded like just another crazy Sheldon tale.

Adelson, naturally, refused to be interviewed for the piece written by Connie Bruck. Although I’ve been aware that Adelson and other Sands officials preferred to pick and choose their contacts with the media, my colleagues and I here at TSW have been frustrated by the virtually permanent news blackout on the part of one of the largest venue owners in the world.

Ron Reese, vice president of communications for the Las Vegas Sands, told me in December that TSW was not important enough a publication to waste any time on … and I think he was being polite.

It turns out Adelson and the rest of us here in the news business actually are peers. According to the New Yorker piece, Adelson owns Israel Hayom, a free daily newspaper in Israel that he started after he couldn’t buy one of the three leading Hebrew-language dailies in the country. News reports in Israel said he invested $180 million in the enterprise primarily because nobody else would or could carry the ultra-conservative message he wanted to deliver.

The good news for his editor at Israel Hayom is that Adelson probably won’t be suing him or her. Not so lucky on that count have been the editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas Sun and who knows how many other publications.

I’m lucky too, I guess, since I must have gotten that one interview three years ago right.

Good thing, since Bruck points out in her story, “He did not shy away from courtroom battles.”

Chudnofsky backed her up by saying, “Since he was a young businessman, Sheldon’s attitude has been: Spend millions in defense and never settle.”

But maybe you already knew that.

Posted by Michael Hart on July 9, 2008 | Comments (1)