What Really Killed ‘The Las Vegas Jewish Reporter’?

According to JTA:

Apparently a casualty of the recession, the 33-year-old Las Vegas Jewish Reporter is shuttering in the wake of low donations, the Las Vegas Sun reported. This week’s Rosh Hashanah edition will be the final edition.

“The newspaper has served us well and we’re proud of it, but we’re enthusiastically looking to a new era of communicating and maintaining contact with our community,” said Elliot Karp, president and CEO of the United Jewish Community/Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, which published the newspaper.

“We had to re-evaluate our priorities. Are the dollars that went to publishing the Reporter better used to help people? The answer to that was yes.”

Tom Ficara of Margate Entertainment emails me today: “The Las Vegas Jewish Reporter was not in any financial trouble. It had excellent advertising sales and management. However, it was not controlled personally by Danny Greenspun and the new entity will be. Abused staffers – good people with no problems at the organization prior to…arrival- had to suffer humiliation, degradation, and character assassination until they were finally driven out. We have denial of pension funds and denial of unemployment benefits used in a heavy handed and conspiratory manner in order to get these people to accept minimal severance (a worker with 19 years service got one month severance) which was tied to signing a nondisclosure to hide the abuse.”

I spoke to Tom for an hour today on the phone. I then emailed Elliot Karp, who runs the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, and Danny Greenspun to get their side of things.

Tom tells me: “My partner in Margate, Charry Kennedy, was, until Friday, the head of women’s philanthropy at the Las Vegas Jewish Federation…

“To me, this is the same news story as the Catholic church.

“The Greenspuns are legends in their own mind. The dad was a hero, Hank Greenspun. Now you have the kids who are fat cats. They got lucky because the sister married a guy like Hank, Mark Fine. Mark built their empire for them. Now they have all this money.

“They’re good people, but their idea of hardship is a domestic chablis at dinner. They’ve never had to work.

“Danny has decided that the internet is the new way things will get done. He’s trying to do a Jewish version of Yahoo. He’s setting up these templates. You take his template with his ads. He makes the money on the ads.

“Danny is getting the endorsement of the national Jewish Federation to do these templates. That will be a lot of money if he ties in all the national papers. He’s also going to sell syndication. All the Federations will take his national templates and add their local content.”

“The Greenspuns have Greenspun Interactive. They have Vegas.com. Maybe Danny, who was the chair of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, takes Elliot and in exchange gets the e-newspapers from the Federation?”

“Charry had to leave the Las Vegas Jewish Federation Thursday. She had to call the police to get safe passage out of the office. That’s how badly Elliot Karp threatened her.

“Karp doesn’t last in any of his positions long. He bounces. Something happened in Rockland, New York, that he would come out so quickly and come out here.”

“They had to kill the paper here. There was nothing wrong with ‘The Jewish Reporter.’ The town is furious that ‘The Jewish Reporter’ is gone. They drove the editor (Arthur Bloberger) into the ground until he quit.

“You know how abusive people do it. They drive you into the corner until you think it is you against the world. The problem that Elliot Karp has is that everybody has found each other. We’ve found lawyers who are going to fight back.

“Elliot came storming into Charry’s office and she thought he was going to hurt her. He kept doing really weird stuff. She kept saying, ‘Please get out of my office.’ He said, ‘I don’t have to leave.’

“Finally, when he did leave, she called the cops and had them escort her out. They’ve turned it around to say that she created a disturbance in the office.”

“Four people went to the new chairman of the Las Vegas Jewish Federation, Leonard Stone, an ambulance chaser, and said, ‘We’re being abused by Elliot Karp. Please help us.’

“Two other people had come in on this.

“Leonard says, I don’t want to hear it. Unless you come to me with stories about razor blades and drugs, I don’t want to hear about Mr. Karp.”

“Charry’s office was between Elliot Karp and Mark Levine, a nice man who does everything he is supposed to do. Karp creates chaos so he can be in charge and pit people against each other. Elliot will come and blame Levine when things go wrong. Charry ended up in the barrel. Karp is mad at Levine and comes out of his office motherf—ing this and that. Levine had enough of that. Charry is in the middle. They’re arguing in front of Charry’s door.

“The next day, Karp comes into her office for damage control. Charry is completely honest. Elliot comes in the next day and says, ‘Did I really say the f-word?’ He wants Charry to say no and Charry says, you did.

“Charry goes to Leonard Stone’s office and says, ‘I’ll tell you the truth but this has to be in confidence. Elliot Karp is mean. There’s going to be no end to it.’

“Stone agrees. Then he called Elliot right after and told him what Charry said.”

“Elliot Karp calls the four in and tells them, ‘You are all fools. Leonard and I are brothers, we’re joined at the hip. You have no chance.’ It was brutal. People in the Las Vegas Jewish Federation office have been hospitalized from the stress that Elliot Karp causes.”

Luke: “What’s the connection between Elliot Karp and Danny Greenspun?”

Tom: “Danny Greenspun brought Elliot Karp in to the Las Vegas Jewish Federation.”

“Elliot’s pattern is that there is always someone in the barrel. The next person is Jackie Kassower. She runs the senior lifeline of Las Vegas.”

Luke: “Why would Elliot want to get rid of her?”

Tom: “Because he has to be torturing somebody. This is his MO. He can’t help himself.

“We believe that one of Elliot’s missions was to kill the newspaper.”

Luke: “So his buddy Danny Greenspun can start something?”

Tom: “Right. But Elliot was a butcher rather than just getting rid of it. He had to butcher the people to do it.”

“In the midst of all this, the Greenspun empire is crumbling. They had to shut down their Boulder City paper. They’ve had to lay off people, about 40% of people. They’ve had to close down two papers. They’re down to their last corporate jet.”

“Danny is a rich man’s son and he feels very entitled. To ruin everyone’s livelihood so he can have another toy is the bottom line here. You have people [with 'The Las Vegas Jewish Reporter'] whose homes are in foreclosure.”

Luke: “How has Elliot Karp succeeded?”

Tom: “Vicki Agron.” Link

Tom: “Danny Greenspun just left as chairman of the Las Vegas Jewish Federation.”

“Elliot Karp came in promoting himself as a fundraiser. He hasn’t been able to raise money for the Las Vegas Jewish Federation, only $23,000. Charry Kennedy, as head of women’s philanthropy, had raised close to $200,000.”

“Arthur Groberger and company are starting a new newspaper called ‘The Las Vegas Jewish Ink’. The community wants a newspaper.

“In the old days, the way you would get on the Las Vegas Jewish Federation board was that the ‘Las Vegas Jewish Reporter’ would publish your mission statement and plan and bio. There would be a community meeting and they would select the board. That’s been torn asunder in the Danny Greenspun era. Danny ran the paper as a division of Federation fundraising.”

“The community will have a better paper with The Ink. These people love their paper and love their community. The first issue is mid-February. It’s going to be 90-plus pages. They’ve got all their advertisers back but one.”

“I’m not Jewish. I’m Italian. I don’t like hate-based leadership. Al Sharpton. That’s hate-based leadership. To have it in a Jewish philanthropy, that sounds like a sitcom or a slasher movie. It’s incomprehensible. I’m bulletproof. I’m not in the Jewish community. They can’t hurt me. I have my own money. I was a journalist. I have this justice-should-prevail mentality.

“The depths that they went to to kill ‘The Las Vegas Jewish Reporter’ is frightening.”

Initially, Tom emailed me Sunday:

We were getting ready to produce a small story on the hate based leadership of one Elliot Karp, CEO of the Jewish Federation, but the story has grown way past our mission. This is a national story of hate based leadership, with the National JF [Jewish Federation] using its offices to pass around hate based leaders such as Elliot Karp much as the Catholics passed around the abusive priests from parish to parish. We are finding everything from two sets of books, to conniving between the Chairman of the LVJF [Danny Greenspun] and the national JF that involved a ‘deal in hell’ to kill off the Jewish Reporter newspaper here (you carried the story).

Basic problem is that the national JF has been passing around a hate based leader, Elliot Karp, despite continual patterns of abuse from Brandeis University through his stops in Rockland, NY; Philadelphia, Columbus Cincinnati, and now Las Vegas.

He has already abused and humiliated five long time LVJF staffers to resignation or termination. All five are in various stages of bringing suit against the LVJF, the national JF, and Karp. Similar cases have been uncovered in Ohio and Massachuetts as well. One Vicki Agron of the National JF is Karp’s champion. We believe that the ‘deal in hell’ was that in return for taking Karp as the CEO of the LVJF, Agron would help Las Vegas publisher and then LVJF Chairman ‘take over’ the local JF supported newspapers with his ‘national E newspaper’ from which he would personally make the income from ads and syndication fees from the JF chapters. As recommended by the JF, he will have free reign to take this area for himself. Locals would use the national template and supplement with their local information.

The Las Vegas Jewish Reporter was not in any financial trouble. It had excellent advertising sales and management. However, it was not controlled personally by Danny Greenspun and the new entity will be. Abused staffers – good people with no problems at the organization prior to Karp’s arrival – had to suffer humiliation, degradation, and character assassination until they were finally driven out. We have denial of pension funds and denial of unemployment benefits used in a heavy handed and conspiratory manner in order to get these people to accept minimal severance (a worker with 19 years service got one month severance) which was tied to signing a nondisclosure to hide the abuse.

We have horror tales galore of the abusive and hate based leadership of Elliot Karp. He’s one nasty son of a bitch… [He] has been encouraged and abetted by Greenspun, [and] current Chairman and accident attorney Leonard Stone. Their hatchet attorney [is] Kim Wanker.