An award-winning journalist and a veteran voice on Nevada Public Radio, Joe Schoenmann is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Born and raised in Wisconsin, he worked as a journalist for The Capital Times in Madison before moving to Las Vegas in 1997.

Here he reported for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Las Vegas Sun, and Las Vegas Life magazine before joining Nevada Public Radio a decade ago.

Joe Schoenmann, host of State of Nevada on KNPR, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thank you.

-Take me back to 1997.

Why did you move to Las Vegas?

-Murder.

It's true.

I just read the book-- -I shouldn't be laughing, but-- -No.

I read the book Homicide by David Simon, and I had covered police in Wisconsin.

There are very few murders there.

The book was fascinating about the Baltimore homicide department, and I wanted to see what it was like in the year before I moved to Vegas, they had the second highest rate of murders per capita in the country.

So I applied for jobs at the Sun and the RJ, and I took the RJ job.

-And you got that beat.

-I got that beat for three years.

-Ultimately, did you end up liking that beat?

-I mean, I liked it.

I thought doing that beat and talking to people, the survivors of murders, I thought it-- actually, I could feel it helped people.

People want-- it's very difficult when you first go to talk to somebody who is a survivor, whose son or father or sister or mom have died.

But they need somebody to talk to.

And at that time, 27 years ago in Vegas, there weren't the types of services that we have now.

And I always felt that they felt they could trust me, you know, with information they were telling me, and I wasn't, you know, just-- just to be honest, I felt I was honest with them about what I was asking them and what was coming from them.

-And so you were serving as somewhat of a counselor?

-I felt that way.

I was also fascinated by it.

And, you know, probably in some ways, it cured me of this fascination with murder and wanting to see what that kind of life, something I'd never even fathomed before I became reporter, what that was like.

-So you told me a story before we started recording about you made a deal with God to help people through journalism.

How did this happen?

-I was a-- after journalism school, which I didn't really want to be, I was a pre-med student for a long time.

I switched.

Journalism was easy to get through at the University of Wisconsin.

And then I was a janitor after college, and I thought it'd be honorable to do that labor, come home at night.

I was going to write a book.

I never wrote books.

I just went out with my friends at night.

And after about nine months, I got so bored.

I went to a Catholic school as a kid.

I wasn't religious, but I prayed, and I said, God, if you give me a job, I'll try to help people.

The next morning, I got a call from a guy who owned Community newspapers in Wisconsin.

And I had written about a story for him for a class at the University of Wisconsin, and he, in a circus voice, said, Joe, I'm going to give you a job.

I'm going to pay more than anybody else.

It was nothing he was paying me, but I took it.

And that's what happened, and I've been in it for good or bad ever since.

-Also we talked about helping people through, well, your extensive coverage on homelessness.

And that relates back to your brother, and I'm thankful that you are willing to share this story.

Will you explain that for our viewers?

-Yeah.

I grew up with a brother who had schizophrenia.

It really developed when he was a teenager.

And the onset for men usually is around 19.

And it was 19 when it really became an issue at our house back in the Midwest.

And, you know, he eventually took his own life.

So we have a huge homeless problem in Las Vegas.

I live downtown.

I see it every day.

Some people might not see it.

And I always-- it's not pleasant, and nobody likes to see homelessness here.

And it's, you know, it causes problems for business, for households, for homes.

People talk about home values.

But I always think that's where my brother would have been.

So I am of dual minds on it.

I think that would have been him.

So I do have empathy for those people, as frustrating as it is to see them on the streets every day.

But yeah, that's it.

-You've come to find that mental health is so much a part of the homelessness issue.

-A huge, huge part.

Even if somebody goes on the street without a mental health issue, living on the street for a while will create it.

-Thank you for sharing that.

-Sure.

-Let's talk about living downtown.

You were probably really well known for the "Joe Downtown" column that you did for Las Vegas Weekly.

That ended in 2014.

What are your takeaways from that time you spent covering downtown so closely?

-Very interesting.

You know, I got to know Tony Hsieh, who was really the spearhead for so much down there.

I think he started it, did not finish it.

Tragically, his life ended.

But I was glad to see it.

What's happened then has really kind of spun off throughout the entire downtown area, and it's created places that weren't here when I moved here for people to go to for people to be part of a community.

That just didn't exist.

Maybe Cafe Roma on Maryland Parkway, which I would always go to almost every day.

That was it.

But now there are, there's a plethora of places you can go.

And I really think that development downtown has, has been incredible.

It's been just something I look forward to seeing almost every day.

-Do you think it continues?

-Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

It's going to be mega.

it's going to stretch all the way to the Stratosphere, and it's going to go over the highway and more into the northern part.

I mean, it's-- these things take so long.

I remember Tony Hsieh had a five-year plan.

It's taking much longer than that, but it is going to happen.

-Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, he was also revolutionary in his treatment of employees and then revolutionary in the development of downtown.

What impact do you think he had on you?

Because you two interacted often.

-I probably-- I'm not ready for that question, but if I had to say, I would say it's this: that through him, even somebody worth about a billion dollars, close to a billion dollars, I always wondered how close were any of his friends.

If he really saw people as friends or people who saw him for the money and they just feel, they feel-- I wondered if he ever felt that he had true close friends here.

I think he did, but there were so many people around him all the time.

It just made you really see that there's a value to having money, and a lot of money, but there's more value to having true friends.

-I want to switch gears to a funny story you told me.

I thought it was funny.

But at one point in your journalism career here in Las Vegas, you would review churches?

-Yeah.

That was a short-lived experience.

-Who thought of that idea?

-I had done it in Wisconsin for a regional magazine called Madison Magazine.

We got a lot of hate mail back then, and the editor of that magazine came to Las Vegas Weekly, became the editor there, and suggested, Why don't you do this again in Vegas?

So that's what I would do.

And-- -What would you rate them on?

-For Christian establishments, 1 to 4 crosses.

And for Jewish, 1 to 4 Stars of David.

We've rated them on architecture, the interesting-- how interesting the sermon was.

It had to be interesting; it couldn't just be rote.

Sort of the communality of people, if there was a good feeling among people.

Because, as a Catholic, to me, the best part of church was when everybody turned and shook everybody's hand or hugged or whatever, and you know, then everybody would relax.

And I wanted to see what that was like here.

And so it was based on that.

We stopped that after maybe 10 weeks as well, because of the hate mail.

-You told me that at one point you were involved in dancing and-- -Yeah.

That's a lot.

Yeah, there was like a faith healer in one of the churches, and I didn't want to do it.

Everybody else was going up, and this old man said, Go on up.

So I went up, and the guy said something, you know, in a tongue, and hit my head and I fell.

And he did it like three times, and then they were all dancing around the church pews.

I didn't want to do that either, but I finally did it.

-Now, did you fall because you actually felt His power?

-I have no idea.

I think I was just terrified.

-Your transition to radio, did you want to be on radio?

-I just wanted to do something challenging, something different.

That's really what it was.

-And you were challenged almost immediately.

Will you tell me about that experience with President Obama?

-Yeah.

It was about-- when did I start?

We had about six months in.

Our normal host, Dave Becker, had to leave for a couple days, so they put me in.

The first day, I think I talked about the best tacos in town, which was-- -Tacos?

-Tacos, yeah.

And he was gone for two days.

The second day, Harry Reid was going to talk about his retirement on our program by the phone.

So I-- there was nobody in the studio with me.

It was just him on the phone.

And then all of a sudden, in my earphones, somebody said, the President's on the phone.

And I said out loud, Shut up.

But I didn't know you had to push a mute button.

So the audience could hear that, and it was Barack Obama.

And I didn't know what to say.

I was like, Oh, hi, President.

Yeah.

-Baptism by fire.

-Yeah, very much so.

-What did you take away from that experience?

-I don't know.

I thought I did terrible.

The people were telling me it was great.

So what I take away from it?

I don't know.

It was almost like everything blacked out, and then it was over.

And I was like, Whoa, what happened?

-You have interviewed so many high-profile people but with the voice of the everyday man.

At least that's what some of your listeners have said, You are the voice of the everyday man.

What do you attribute that to, your ability to do that?

-I was thinking about this on the way over here, that, you know, in journalism, you don't make a lot of money.

I mean, and that's a bad thing for the journalists, but it's probably a good thing for the profession, because it-- you never lose your connection with just, you know, people who are out there surviving and just living day to day.

And I just, I don't look at my job that way.

My job is that way.

And so when I'm asking questions, I'm asking questions that I think normal people-- or just that come to my mind, and I think that's what people, maybe they hear.

That's why they think, you know, that you're this "every man" because I'm just asking what everybody else would want to ask.

-Tell me about one or two stories that have truly impacted you that you've covered.

I mean, you've won numerous awards, but sometimes those aren't always the stories that stick with you.

-Yeah.

Maybe one of my first murders here.

I used to cover so many, I would tell my boss, I'm going to go take in a murder, and she'd say, Have a good time.

This would be in the afternoon sometimes.

But it was a Sunday night in Lorenzi Park, and there was a 16-year-old boy who had been playing soccer.

It still kind of gets to me.

I could still picture it exactly in my mind.

And when I got there, the cops had-- only one cop had arrived, and he was rolling up the "Do Not Cross" tape.

And he was like, Man, this is screwed up.

And the kid's two parents were rolling next to his body in agony.

He was a Hispanic kid, and they couldn't-- they wouldn't touch his body.

But always just, I still think about that all the time.

And then magazine I did for Las Vegas Life about the first escort service king in town, Rich Sorrano, who was also a big supporter of the ACLU.

He was also, he's from New Jersey.

He was one of the first like male dancers in town.

Then he started this business.

Then the mob wanted to knock him off, because they thought somehow he was stealing their phone calls when they started their own business.

The FBI even tipped him off about it and helped him.

And that story was really interesting.

It was a slice of life in Vegas I had no idea existed.

I didn't know anything about it.

And, you know, and people-- I know how police at the time thought about Rich, but I think what it really showed me was there are two sides to everybody.

Everybody.

There is no singularly awful bad person.

Everybody has something good and something bad in them.

It's all gray.

-Joe Schoenmann, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-My pleasure.

Thank you.