Oh, so that’s the monorail’s new marketing strategy! We’ve got to admit, we were stumped there for awhile. Every month, the Review-Journal’s Omar Sofradzija writes about ever-declining ridership numbers, and every month, monorail spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman replies that, once the new "marketing initiatives" kick in, things will be different.

Of course, nothing ever changes. So now that Sofradzija has reported that the monorail had its worst month ever, that old "marketing" excuse isn’t going to work anymore. So Reisman had to fall back on the old standby: totally divorcing the monorail from reality and claiming that what happened in the past didn’t actually happen.

No, seriously, she did. According to Sofradzija, who apparently keeps pretty close track of these things, monorail CEO Curtis Myles said on Dec. 14, 2005 that "There is an expectation that we’ll see, as a result of the fare increases, some decrease in ridership. We expect to increase ridership from marketing efforts. Hopefully, the two will offset." He continued by predicting an 11 percent increase in riders in 2006.

But according to Reisman, that simply never happened. "At no time has anyone at the monorail ever expected ridership would increase after fares" went up, from $3 to $5. Instead, she said, the monorail expected a 13 percent decline in ridership.

At no time has anyone at the monorail expected ridership would increase? But, Ingrid, Curtis Myles said precisely that! Are you calling the Road Warrior a liar?

Actually, this reminds us of the time that we at Various Things & Stuff wrote a big story on the monorail, interviewing Myles in the process. In that story, we wrote this: "In an interview, Myles said [Henderson Mayor Jim] Gibson may have left eventually, but the string of mechanical failures likely hastened his departure."

Well, as you can imagine, Gibson called Myles and demanded to know if Myles had actually said that. And Myles claimed he’d been misquoted by us! (At least that’s what Gibson said at the time.)

Of course, we assured the good mayor that Myles had said precisely that, and we had the notes to prove it. (Our notes show that, in discussing the "takeover" of Transit Systems Management — the private firm that employed Gibson as CEO — by the Las Vegas Monorail Co., Myles said this: "If the thing was operating perfectly, would there have been an incentive to change? No. Gotta believe that that [the monorail’s string of mechanical problems] had something to do with the incentive for that [the takeover, and Gibson’s ouster] to happen when it did." Our notes further indicate that Myles said "TSM [Transit Systems Management] has to share some of blame.")

So, the Road Warrior’s notes show Myles said something that Reisman now denies he said. And our notes show Myles said something that he later denied to Gibson that he’d said. Hmmm. Interesting.

So, aside from trying to revise history, what’s the monorail’s plan to turn things around for 2007?

"It was always expected that a transit system fare increase would result in a ridership decrease; however, the monorail implemented marketing initiatives simultaneously to boost ridership," Reisman explained. "We expect to see the full impact of these initiatives in the next year or so."

Of course! Marketing! That’s the ticket! That will reverse a clear trend toward fewer and fewer people riding the train, dwindling cash receipts, bleeding off the monorail’s cash reserves, bonds that have fallen to junk status and predictions of default!

Or maybe they could just deny there’s such a thing as the "Las Vegas Monorail" at all. Yeah, that’s it. Try that!

» Quotable: "I think I’ve had a shorter honeymoon than Britney Spears." — Gov. Jim Gibbons, quoted in the Review-Journal. Now that’s funny. Or at least it would be if Gibbons wasn’t the governor, as opposed to a pop star who could fuck up publicly and pathetically numerous times and injure only her reputation instead of millions of innocent residents of the Silver State. 

» So, Clark County is getting into the Media Watch business, eh? We thought that was our job! But the county’s public information office has launched a website "…to set the record straight on a case-by-case basis involving inaccurate media reports." The page has but one entry, for now.

Now, some media types are irked at the county fact-checking their work. We’re a bit more sanguine about it, for a couple of reasons. First, we’ve worked in the media for a long time, and we know it’s easy to make a mistake. Second, once that mistake is made, even if a correction is published, it’s hard to get the correct word out to the public who read the original story but not the correction. And third, since a mistake in a newspaper can easily be repeated by television stations, columnists and bloggers, even if a correction is published, getting correct information out quickly is a good thing.

Of course, the temptation will be for the county to do what all governments want to do: Write the news themselves. Why do you think they’ve got newsletters and TV stations at both the city and the county? Because propaganda allows them to get their version of the news out. (And on days when it’s revealed that a deputy district attorney asked a county official to censor an embarrassing public report on failures to protect abused and neglected kids, you see why they’d want to change the subject.)

But if the county’s staff sticks to correcting errors of fact, then the media has little to fear; we’re supposed to get our facts right in the first place, and correct them even if nobody demands they be corrected. If the intent is to slant the news, however, well the county’s media watch can expect a little media media watch from us at Various Things & Stuff!