Columnist John L. Smith recently resigned from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Days earlier, editor Keith Moyer announced at a meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists that Smith would not be allowed to write about the newspaper’s new owner, Sheldon Adelson, “as long as I’m editor,” one attendee tweeted.
Smith had written about Adelson in several columns. Last December, after it was revealed that Las Vegas Sands Corporation owner Adelson and his family bought the newspaper, Smith wrote that Adelson was “precisely the wrong person to own this or any newspaper. His disdain for the working press and its prickly processes is palpable–and easily illustrated by his well-known litigiousness. I experienced this firsthand when Adelson sued me for a few lines I’d written in my 2005 book Sharks in the Desert: The Founding Fathers and Current Kings of Las Vegas. At the time, my daughter Amelia was being treated for brain cancer. After an excruciating civil process, during which I was forced to declare bankruptcy, the case was dismissed with prejudice by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Bruce Markell, who declared me the prevailing party.”
Las Vegas magnate Steve Wynn also unsuccessfully sued Smith, who emailed his co-workers, “If a Las Vegas columnist is considered ‘conflicted’ because he’s been unsuccessfully sued by two of the most powerful and outspoken players in the gaming industry, then it’s time to move on.”
Adelson and his family bought the newspaper for $140 million months from the New Media Investment Group, which earlier had paid $102 million for the Review-Journal and seven daily newspapers owned by Stephens Media LLC. At first the new ownership was identified as News + Media, a Delaware LLC that was not required to publicly list its owners. Later the newspaper staff discovered the Adelsons were the owners.
Moyer was hired in February, after the Adelson family assured him it would “never inject itself in the news-gathering process,” he said, adding Adelson “told me directly he would be staying out of the newsroom.”
Smith won first place in 2013 in the Best of the West regional journalism competition and in 2010 received the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award in 2010.
