Print reporter tries his hand at new media
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from the book “The Last Story: The Murder of an Investigative Journalist in Las Vegas,” by Review-Journal Investigations Editor Arthur Kane. The murder trial of Robert Telles, who is accused of killing Review-Journal reporter Jeff German in September 2022, is scheduled to begin Monday.
Top editors at the Las Vegas Review-Journal wanted to expand Jeff German’s media portfolio.
They assigned German to host the second season of the RJ’s podcast “Mobbed Up,” which took listeners through Las Vegas’ sordid history of organized crime.
The Review-Journal had joined with The Mob Museum to produce a series of podcasts recounting organized crime control of the city in the 1970s and 1980s.
It was a good way to promote the museum and a revenue stream for the paper.
Podcasting was far outside German’s comfort zone, and he made it clear to Executive Editor Glenn Cook and German’s direct editor Rhonda Prast.
German knew the material well, having lived through and written about much of the battle for Las Vegas that he covered in season two of the podcast. He just wasn’t confident in his broadcast skills.
“You’re going to be great at it,” Cook, the paper’s top editor, told him after giving him the assignment.
“I don’t know how to write for audio,” German responded. “I’m going to narrate this thing?”
German, after forty years in the business, realized it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“All right, all right,” he said, intoning that I will do it if you say so, but I’m not really buying it.
German was paired up with Larry Mir, a tattooed and muscled senior technical director of digital, to produce the podcast.
Knowing their difference in age but not knowing German well at that point, Mir assumed that German would hate him for his inked arms. He also assumed that working with German would be a pain.
Nothing could have been further from the truth as German took to podcasting like he did to reporting.
Mir’s main direction was often about German’s tone or delivery, but after a couple of episodes, the veteran reporter had found another form of media where he excelled.
They connected early when Mir brought up the Binion murder case without knowing that German wrote a book about it. German brought him a signed copy of “Murder in Sin City.”
The second season of “Mobbed Up” focused on many of the stories German covered, including about Judge Harry Claiborne’s role in Vegas history. It also told the tale of how entertainer Wayne Newton and talk show host Johnny Carson battled to buy the Mob-run Aladdin Hotel.
The biggest hassle for Mir in working with German was the older man’s chronic ignorance of technology.
The series was taped during the COVID pandemic, so much of the interviewing was done through videoconferencing. Mir repeatedly had to help German set up Zoom and Google Meets conference calls as the simplest of technology often befuddled German.
Despite that, the two had a lot of laughs, like when the script required German to swear on the podcast.
“Ross recalls that his effort to get an interview with Guido Penosi in Beverly Hills became a moment of laughter during the trial. Penosi told him, ‘F**k you,’” German would read multiple times because takes were disrupted by laughter.
German told Mir that he was looking forward to the profanity, especially since the podcast included a disclaimer.
“I want to get that one right,” he joked.
The podcast also gave German an opportunity to talk about old times.
“I’ve covered organized crime from the streets to the boardrooms of the Strip for more than forty years,” German said in the intro to the episodes.
German talked about his history covering the Mob and even managed to get his story about being punched by Sy Freedman into the podcast.
“One night, years ago at a social gathering of politicians and courthouse, movers and shakers at the old Sands Hotel, I was sucker punched by a mob associate,” he said, sharing the story in episode two of “Mobbed Up’s” second season. “Unhappy about how he was portrayed in one of my stories, a couple of hours later with four stitches under my lip, I had a war story to tell. The wise guy didn’t like seeing in print that he was collecting campaign money for the sheriff and juice money for the Mob at the same time, while on the public payroll, as a justice court warrant officer. What I learned was that writing something bad about the Mob can get you nicked up. What’s worse is being in bed with the Mob and crossing it like Jimmy Hoffa. That can cost you your life.”
Season one of “Mobbed Up” (with a different host) had done well. Geoff Schumacher, who was German’s editor at the Sun and had taken a job as vice president of exhibits and programs at The Mob Museum, was wary about German hosting the second season.
He knew firsthand about German’s reluctance to embrace technology or anything that deviated from his long-practiced print reporting skills.
Only when Schumacher started seeing the scripts was he convinced the second season with German would be as good as the first season.
As he did with computer research and open records, German embraced the new media and threw himself into the project that posthumously won him a Nevada Press Association award for Podcast of the Year.
Listeners agreed, downloading the various episodes of the second season nearly six-hundred thousand times altogether.
Despite overall praise for the podcast, German was looking to get back to what he knew best.
“I hope I don’t have to do this again,” he told Mir as they were wrapping up the second season.
The book was published by WildBlue Press (wildbluepress.com) in April. wbp.bz/laststory
