Commode convergence

Sometime in the future, I’ll probably look back at this post and wonder what I was thinking when I wrote it, and maybe even regret that it’s in my blog’s archives, but who cares?

Live a little. 🙂

Big-time convergence doesn’t have to be reserved for just big-time stories. (If you’d like to see examples of convergence/multimedia journalism that will warm the cockles of your favorite journalism professor’s heart, there is definitely some here.)

A few weeks ago in one of our editorial meetings for lasvegasweekly.com, our nightlife reporter — Deanna Rilling — pitched a story on the extravagant women’s bathroom at the new nightclub inside the Hard Rock Hotel.

As the discussion continued for what initially was thought to be an online-only story about Vegas’ latest preposterous party potty, it was pointed out that there were some other really out-there bathrooms in our town’s nightlife scene. Next thing you know, we’re planning a list of five bitchin’ bathrooms, complete with a huge photo gallery and a video.

Then at one of our weekly group editorial meetings — which includes the top editors from Vegas, our luxury magazine, the Las Vegas Magazine, which is for tourists and is found in most hotel rooms in this city, the Las Vegas Weekly alternative/local lifestyle publication, all of our company’s different editorial websites, and, of course, the Las Vegas Sun — it was decided it would be fun to play a lighter (but interesting) story like this across all of Greenspun Media Group’s titles.

For many of our readers, the story was probably first seen in this morning’s Las Vegas Sun print edition:

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Or on our newspaper’s website:

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The Sun’s take on the story was written by one of our business/gaming journalists, Amanda Finnegan, and was much more about the business of building something like this and how something so expensive is cost-justified in these times of constant focus on ROI.

Online, Amanda’s story included lots of links to photos of the rooms referenced in the story, as well as a huge (and very fun) gallery shot by staff photographer Leila Navidi, with an assist to staff photographer Steve Marcus.

This week’s issue of Las Vegas Weekly also came out today. Here is the cover:

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And on Page 51 was Deanna’s story on the five coolest club bathrooms in Las Vegas. It looked like this:

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On the homepage of lasvegasweekly.com, the story was played like this (with a totally great/appropriate headline for that site):

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The lasvegasweekly.com package also had Leila’s great photos, including a few images that were a little too racy for the Sun’s site.

Both sites also ran this cool and informative video package from Greenspun videographer Trent Ogle on the bathroom at the Vanity nightclub, which is probably the king (queen?) of the overkill Vegas crappers.

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http://media.lasvegassun.com/media/assets/swf/mvc_video_2.1.swf

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The other publications produced out of the Greenspun Newsroom — Vegas magazine and Las Vegas Magazine — also are planning to run at least some of the photos from this package in upcoming issues.

What’s even goofier about this story/package (can you believe that it actually can get goofier?) is that our company’s marketing/PR division got involved with it once it was done and issued a press release about it this morning. As of 5 p.m. today, two television stations had picked it up. The expectation is that more will.

Our readers seemed to enjoy the story, as it didn’t take long for it to break into our Top 10 most-read list today.

Look, I’m not even trying to pretend that this is groundbreaking or a story that matters. It’s not. I know that. And you know that.

But doing something like this on Sin City’s sh*tters was a lot of fun and a great exercise in working together. Finding the different angles that were appropriate for each publication and platform was an interesting exercise for us.

Now, please excuse me, I need to go see what it’s like to “visit the office” with an inspiring panoramic view. 🙂

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