Exclusive: Breakdown? Las Vegas writer Steve Friess says his ridiculed Danny Gans apology column was directed toward us!

“Here's a piece that's sure to make
a certain angry, delusional,
thoroughly discredited kook
out there go NUTS..."
--Steve Friess' intro to "A Fine Restraint"

There’s a very interesting yet sad postscript to yesterday’s gobsmacking, mind-blowing astonishing column in the Las Vegas Weekly, in which local writer, comp queen and New York Times freelancer Steve Friess defended his and his colleagues’ failure to cover and determination to cover up the drug overdose death of local superstar Danny Gans.

According to Friess’ own casino-boosting website, the column was written expressly for the staff of TabloidBaby.com!

Friess’ column was a bizarre, poorly-reasoned apologia that inadvertently tore back the lid on the everyday corruption of the Las Vegas media establishment and the twisting of journalistic values in an environment where free meals and show tickets are the norm, casino magnates and criminals call the shots and the mantra “What happpens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” is more than an ad slogan.

Beginning with an attack on working journalists that lumps phone calls to pubic officials with bribery and searching through trash, Friess’s self-righteous screed takes all of three sentences to get to the nut graph:

"In Las Vegas, when left to our own devices,
we do things a little differently.
And I, for one, couldn’t be happier about that."

Anyway, click here to read the column and our annotations.

Friess reprinted the article on his Vegas-boosting blog and added to it an introduction that's almost as incredible as the piece itself:

“Here's a piece that's sure to make a certain angry, delusional, thoroughly discredited kook out there go NUTS, which I admit I will enjoy immensely and can't wait to see what histrionics result. Don't know what I mean? Ah, well, you're not missing much. But, seriously, I am quite proud that the Vegas press didn't devolve into the gutter universe that could easily have devoured coverage of the Danny Gans story and so I said so..."

Friess’ unsteady mental and emotional condition are evident in his assertion that this site has been “discredited,” when even mainstream Las Vegas journalists admit we were right from the start, and that their hands were tied by their superiors and outside forces alike.


Friess censors any negative or critical comments that appear on his site and stack sit with friends and cohorts to boost his unsteady credibility. Yet on this posting, in which Friess and his friends continue their childish name-calling (“kooks,” “nutcase,” “crazies,” “crazy people,” etc.) even his supporters warn that he may have gone too far in his cover-up excuse, and may indeed be teetering on the edge of some kind of emotional breakdown:

"Michael said…
"While I'm not in the kook's camp. And I understand your point about the Vegas media not going tabloid over it. I think you are leaving out some important parts of the situation... This is typical for Vegas media, skeletons in the closet whether imaginary or real aren't reported by the Vegas media as a whole. Negative happenings for casinos, performers, and incidents that happen are not in most cases reported on to their fullest extent. So in many cases this could be construed as business as usual for the Vegas media..."

"Branden in Vegas said...
"Steve: I think you've gotten a little bit too emotional in all of this because all of the absolutely ridiculous things that your nemesis has said about you. I do think the Vegas media should've been harder on this if only for Danny Gans' sake..."

Stay tuned. New details about the life and death of Danny Gans are emerging by the day...

Steve Friess photos: Las Vegas Weekly