PERSON: Joe Schoenmann

The Las Vegas Sun; KNPR

Journalist, Author and Senior Producer of KNPR’s State of Nevada

Joe Schoenmann (born in Madison, Wisconsin) is an American journalist and nonfiction author who has lived in Las Vegas since 1997. Schoenmann graduated from River Valley High School in Spring Green, Wisconsin. He went on to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Schoenmann began his journalism career as a reporter at the Elroy Tribune-Keystone, a community weekly, taking his first daily newspaper job at the West Bend Daily News before moving to the Capital Times in Madison. In 1997, he worked as a reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He went on to work as a writer, then as managing editor, for Las Vegas Weekly, and, most recently, as a reporter at the Las Vegas Sun. He has appeared as a commentator on KNPR 88.9, the National Public Radio affiliate in Las Vegas.

He was given the Outstanding Journalist award in 2002 and Story of the Year in 1998 by the Nevada Press Association, as well as four other awards in 2002 for his work at Las Vegas Weekly. In 2004, he was the gold medal winner for Profile Writing in the 19th annual City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA) awards competition for an article about an outcall service operator in Las Vegas Life magazine.

The nonfiction book Vegas Rag Doll: A True Story of Terror and Survival as a Mob Hitman’s Wife, co-authored by Schoenmann with Wendy Mazaros and released in fall 2011, is an autobiography of Mazaros’ marriage to Tom Hanley, 39 years her senior, who was involved in organized crime in Las Vegas.

— Wikipedia