There are few cities where consumers need to be more alert than Las Vegas. The best advice I can give visitors is to be suspicious of all advice. The guides and published reviews that offer rankings and opinions and supposed insider advice to Las Vegas are frequently no exception. Buying good coverage and positive reviews is something done without shame here by of all types of nightclubs, restaurants, strip clubs, production shows and golf courses. I don't blame the businesses for buying this positive coverage, because there turns out to be a perfect karma to it; this practice has encouraged so many little publications and websites to pop up that keeping up your rep can now get expensive.

Take Bill Walters. Walters is a local golf course developer and political heavyweight whose uncanny knack for making a great deal with the city for land and then improving it has frequently made him controversial. He recently generated outrage as he finagled to have restrictions lifted from land he owns near a waste sewage treatment plant to allow him to build homes there.  It is worth noting  as well that Walters usually spends his days insisting he has no special pull with public officials.

But when it comes to public evaluations of his golf courses, he admits he is willing to influence and buy, yes, buy, in the form of good reviews and referrals. Walters was a customer of Robert Lewis owner of lasvegasgolf.com which during their business relationship reviewed his Stallion Mountain golf course with "The views are magnificent." But when Lewis wanted to charge Walters more for the love the business relationship soured. The Review-Journal, which is reporting this story, goes on to note that in his defamation lawsuit against Lewis, Walters  claims:

A new deal wasn't reached. Lewis' website then had this to say of Stallion Mountain (the very course that just a short time ago it had found magnificent): "And you thought the Exorcist was scary?" All of this would actually entertain me, except for the fact that Lewis plans to invoke Nevada's journalism shield law in defending himself. He argues that the fact that he runs a website should not keep him from being seen as a real journalist. I agree with that. But if the allegations contained in the lawsuit are true, it might not be the medium that keeps people from viewing Lewis' website as journalism rather the problem is all about there possibly being a price tag on generating the message.