LAS VEGAS: For several months now, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has been relentlessly printing some hard-hitting investigative articles examining the failure by one of the city's major hotel and casino companies, Harrah's Entertainment, to secure proper permits for various construction and renovation projects.

It wasn't that big a stretch, then, to imagine that retribution could be in play when the company quietly decided to discontinue selling the hometown newspaper in the gift shops of its eight casino-resorts, and to stop providing free copies to guests in suites who receive complimentary papers. The Review-Journal's gambling-beat writer, Howard Stutz, implied such a link in his column on Sunday.

But the reality may be even worse for the paper: Too few people wanted to read it.

"We actually provide comped newspapers to the guests in thousands of rooms every day, but in light of the current economic slowdown, we're reviewing all of our expenses across the board," said Gary Thompson, spokesman for Harrah's, whose properties have a total of 20,700 guest rooms throughout the city, including those at Caesars Palace, Flamingo Las Vegas and Paris Las Vegas. "We asked, and virtually none of our guests say they read the local newspaper."

The paper's publisher, Sherman Frederick, said on Tuesday that the newspaper, which is offered on the Strip wrapped in a tourist-focused extra section with show reviews and travel advice, sold about 600 copies a day at the 24 Harrah's-owned locations.

Mr. Frederick said that while he thinks the expense of providing the free newspapers would "be pretty low on the list of cost-cutting priorities" for Harrah's, he accepts Mr. Thompson's explanation that it was a business decision and not retaliation for the recent reporting on the company.

"I don't know that there's any nexus between our coverage and this news," said Mr. Frederick, who noted that there had been no change in Harrah's advertising habits. "I'm reluctant to draw dotted lines between events. If Harrah's was out to punish the paper, you would think they would let us know."

He predicted that the Review-Journal would return to the company's guest rooms and newsstands sooner or later, and that occasional interruptions in bulk sales like this are to be expected.

Mr. Thompson was less optimistic. Those who seek out news gravitate to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, he said, or go online to find it.

"When people come here from out of town, they're really not interested in the local news," Mr. Thompson said. "That's not what they're here for. The statistics show they're here for an average of 3.5 days and they pack a lot into it. Newspaper reading isn't a part of it."

Yet according to Mr. Frederick, the paper's single-copy sales on the Strip have increased since Harrah's dropped the paper, "which indicates that Harrah's customers are walking outside their casinos to buy the R-J."

One of those people is likely to be Jeff Leatherock of Oklahoma City, who is due to arrive later this week for a stay at, as he called it, the "R-J-deprived" Rio All-Suites Casino-Hotel, a Harrah's property.