This week, Ira spoke with John Katsilometes (KATS), the man-about-town, whose column runs daily on page 3A in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In this 30-minute episode of Talk About Las Vegas, Katsilometes talks about the effect of COVID on the Las Vegas entertainment scene; how Las Vegas deals with the protocols and messaging for visitors; why small-capacity entertainers have found a way to continue to perform; how Las Vegas expands the rules for entrainment; why he believes it’s important to embrace pushing the boundaries; how entertainment is in transition; why Las Vegas allows you to grow as a professional and as a person; and why social media allows journalists another set of options to tell stories.
Prior to moving to the R-J in August 2016, Katsilometes was a columnist and magazine writer for the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Weekly and editor-at-large for Greenspun Media Group. He has won numerous state and regional awards, including the 2013 Nevada Press Association’s Journalist of the Year honor, and has been awarded four times for column writing by the Best of the West contest. In March 2019, Katsilometes was inducted into the UNLV College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame for coverage of the city’s arts and entertainment scene.
Some of his biggest stories include covering the millennial New Year’s Eve with Wayne Newton in 1999, the first print interview with Roy Horn after he was seriously injured onstage at the Mirage in October of 2002, and Jerry Lewis’s final Labor Day telethon in 2010. Katsilometes was also first to report Lewis’s death in 2017, and was the only journalist to interview Celine Dion after she announced she was leaving the Colosseum at Caesars Palace this June.
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