Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L Smith resigned on Tuesday over an internal ban on him writing columns about the newspaper’s owner, billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson.

In a letter that he left copies of on newsroom desks, Smith said that due to “recent events” he will “no longer remain employed” by the company.



I learned many years ago about the importance of not punching down in weight class. You don’t hit “little people” in this craft, you defend them. In Las Vegas, a quintessential company town, it’s the blowhard billionaires and their political toadies who are worth punching. And if you don’t have the freedom to call the community’s heavyweights to account, then that “commentary” tag isn’t worth the paper on which it’s printed.

The Review-Journal’s newly hired editor, Keith Moyer, made the gag order public on Saturday during an interview with the Society of Professional Journalists, when he said: “As long as I’m editor, John won’t write about Sheldon Adelson.”



Moyer claimed the policy was due to a conflict of interest, citing Adelson’s failed defamation suit against Smith in 2005 regarding a passage of his book Sharks in the Desert: The Founding Fathers and Current Kings of Las Vegas.



The case was thrown out, but not before the legal proceedings bankrupted the columnist, whose daughter was undergoing brain cancer treatment at the time.

“The Las Vegas Review-Journal [is] a spirited newspaper that has battled to remain an independent voice of journalism in this community,” Smith’s letter stated. “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.”

According to Jon Ralston, the Nevada politics writer who first reported Smith’s resignation, the ban on Adelson columns came in January and was recently updated to include a gag order on columns about Steve Wynn, another casino magnate with strong political clout who has sued Smith in the past.

Calling Adelson the “bullyboy of Las Vegas Boulevard” in a 2013 Daily Beast story about the defamation suit, Smith said: “At its dark heart, the case wasn’t about defamation, but about making me an object lesson for my newspaper and other journalists who dared to criticize the billionaire.”

One of the richest men in the world, and well-known Republican mega-donor, Adelson is the principal owner of the Las Vegas Sands corporation. He purchased the Review-Journal in December 2015 under a shroud of anonymity. And as soon as his identity was revealed through the paper’s own sleuthing, Smith’s job seemed tenuous.

Just days after the Review-Journal’s sale, he responded to the Adelson family’s promise not to meddle in newsroom coverage by writing: “We’ll see … [Adelson’s] disdain for the working press and its prickly processes is palpable – and easily illustrated by his well-known litigiousness.”