NORM CLARKE BIO

Norm Clarke’s inspirational journey starts with personal setbacks: he lost his father and his eye within months as a pre-teen. He was a grocery store delivery boy in Montana when he got the opportunity to write sports for the weekly hometown newspaper.

A college dropout, his improbable career would take him from tiny Terry, Montana, to a 50-plus year career that included 12 years as a Pulitzer Prize-nominated newsman and sportswriter with The Associated Press in Cincinnati, San Diego and Los Angeles.

  In 1984, after serving as The AP’s coordinator of coverage of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, he joined the Rocky Mountain News to serve as the point man in Denver’s bid for a Major League Baseball franchise. In June 1991, Clarke broke the story that Denver was getting a National League expansion franchise.

After 15 years at the Rocky as baseball writer, sports columnist and man-about-town columnist, he moved to the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1999 as gossip columnist. He broke Britney Spears’ 55-hour marriage and Michael Jackson’s surprise move to Las Vegas to launch his comeback.  

Clarke was voted Best Journalist in 2013 and 2014 in the Review-Journal’s annual Best of Las Vegas readers poll. He left the Review-Journal in 2016 and continues to chronicle the Las Vegas celebrity and sports scene.

Since 2014 he has hosted “Conversations with Norm,” a celebrity interview series at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts. His guests have included Wayne Newton, Marie Osmond, Carrot Top and Greg Maddux.

His public speaking combines the biggest stories he’s covered with the most inspirational people he’s met.