By Elizabeth Sewell | March 11th, 2010 – 12:00am

 To say John L. Smith knows Las Vegas is an understatement. After nearly a quarter-century as the lead columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, there are not many subjects he hasn’t tackled—from the mob to mining. He writes five columns a week (including one for the company’s rural Nevada newspapers) and still has had enough material to write 12 books. He is especially attracted to “the great comic characters in Nevada”—namely those who don’t mean to be funny. While nobody in the local media is better with the skewer, Smith is also the consummate Irishman, often exposing a softer side in his column. It was in that space that he spoke of his father’s death and his daughter Amelia’s battle with cancer, which began in 2004 with the diagnosis of her brain tumor. Amelia is now in remission, and Smith, 49, credits her illness with changing his outlook on life and his approach to living in Las Vegas.

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