It is a story seemingly with no end: “As Vegas Dies,” “Is Sin City Dead?,” “Las Vegas hits a wall,” “Las Vegas Strip resort venue files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” and “Sin City continues to sink.” The media outlets covering the story run the gauntlet, from the UK’s Daily Mail to the Reno Gazette Journal. Regardless of the geographical location, the outlets have one thing in common: reporting the decline or even the death of Las Vegas is a favorite topic. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of resorts on the Strip are exaggerations.
Rather, Las Vegas and the state of Nevada appear to be headed for yet another record year in gaming revenue. And while visitation to Las Vegas is down in 2025, the numbers are down as compared to record highs; the city, in fact the state, are on a long growth streak that began when the pandemic ended. Can you imagine a report of LeBron James at the peak of his career, after scoring the second highest number of points ever, and a reporter writing that James was dead or dying? The media prefers negative headlines. They sell more papers, or in today’s world, garner more clicks.
The slow decline of mainstream news outlets caused by digital media has led to severe cutbacks. There are fewer reporters and those remaining are covering too many subjects. Turnover is high, leaving young, inexperienced, and undertrained reporters who often do not understand the subject. That is common in gaming, where reporters often confuse revenue for profit and make invalid comparisons, such as month over month rather than year over year. Except for Las Vegas, very few experienced gaming writers are left. Deeper issues and long-term trends are beyond the scope of most news outlets.
But there is yet another issue, a self-repeating feedback loop. In his 2002 book, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, Steven Johnson puts a date on the phenomenon, 1992. That year, Gennifer Flowers said she’d had a 12-year affair with presidential candidate Bill Clinton. When a reporter asked Clinton about the affair, he denied it in a rather lengthy reply. According to Johnson, the heads of the major networks judged Clinton’s reply and the issue as non-news. However, unlike in previous years, those chief executives could not control all the news.
Overnight, Clinton and Flowers became a major news story. It was repeated over and over by local news sources, radio, television, and print. Again according to Johnson, that was due to change at CNN, the Cable News Network of Ted Turner. The network had given its news feed directly to local stations, allowing those stations to choose stories independently, not just ones that the network chose for them. As one after another of the local stations broadcast the story, others followed suit. It became a feedback loop and the story became secondary to the reporting on the story.
Today, we are very familiar with the phenomenon and it’s much stronger than in 1992. In 2025, thousands upon thousands of internet sites simply rewrite or repost previous stories. Those stories feed on one another, creating a massive feedback loop. Fortunately for us, the stories usually burn themselves out in 24 hours. Occasionally, however, a story gains a longer shelf life. The narrative of Las Vegas dying is one of those, in part because each time Las Vegas reports its monthly visitor statistics, it gets another boost. Las Vegas is popular internationally, thus stories filled with photos of casinos empty and dying are great click bait.
The issue is more significant than whether Las Vegas is in a death spiral. The recycled gossip, rather than news, points out the fragile nature of truth. It is one of the biggest issues of our time: What is true and what is not?
Years and years ago as a young man on the coast of Spain, I spent a couple of weeks sitting on the beach, thinking about the nature of truth and reality. I kept a journal of my wanderings entitled, “What is Real and What is Not.” When my stay on the beach was over and it was time to move, the issue was resolved in my mind. The solution would not have passed the muster of an older mind, nor would it be applicable today. But at the time, it worked for a 23-year-old traveler. In short, the truths that had been part of my upbringing about the value of bigger, newer, and more expensive were in fact value judgments and opinions, not truths.
In the 21st century, truth is even more elusive and relative, not in science, but in ordinary life, politics and the media. The internet and artificial intelligence further cloud the issue. Recognizing gossipy stories pumped to the level of news by the internet-led feedback loops is challenging. And identifying artificially generated narratives, photos, or videos is beyond most of us. For me, the lesson is the same today as it was in 1965: Beware of things reported as truth, whatever the source of the report. Question everything. Media feedback loops make news out of the thinnest of material.
