Late last year, the New York Times, in the wake of the Jason Blair plagiarism scandal, hired its first-ever ombudsman. An ombudsman is an in-house critic and reader advocate. While the Weekly clearly shares some attributes with the Times—worldwide reach, agenda-setting influence, the use of newsprint—we haven't bothered with an ombudsman. This week, however, the editors having finally looked up the spelling of "ombudsman," we decided, what the heck—let's skip the Jason Blair phase and go right to the reader advocate. Introducing Mr. Horton Veal, retired grammarian and onetime editor of Bite Me: The Quarterly Review of Shut the Hell Up. As the necessity, occasion and need to fill space arises, Mr. Veal will address reader concerns, point out our mistakes, niggle over typos and generally make us regret going forward with this dumb idea.
OK, enough chitchat. It's time to shit or cut bait, so let's get on with business. One John E.M. D'Aura writes to ask:
"Is the Las Vegas Weekly planning to expand?
"I ask this because your subtitle includes the phrase 'everything else that matters,' and obviously 100 pages, less ad space, is NOT adequate to that task. Even 1,000 pages would barely make a significant dent.
"Then there are the extraneous words in that phrase. More properly it should read: 'Everything Matters.' But then, even 10,000 pages would NOT approach adequacy.
"Just how much could LVW expand and maintain a weekly publishing schedule?"
Glad you asked, John. Actually, no I'm not. Come on, isn't the truth obvious? Instead of expanding to 10,000 pages a week—well beyond the reach of the paper's current staff of 100 monkeys with typewriters—the editors have clearly decided to redefine "everything else that matters" to mean, basically, "hot chicks, cheap food and movies involving trolls." Hell, they hardly need 13 pages for that.
Next question, please.