Deke Castleman is Huntington Press' long-time senior editor and has been writing about Las Vegas for 20 years. He handles questions on history, travel, demographics, current events and politics, personalities, and analysis.
David Matthews is QoD's go-to guy for many of the technical gambling questions. He's Huntington Press' Web site director and an expert gambler who placed first in the Ultimate Blackjack Tour's inaugural tournament, which will air on CBS starting in September. He knows a lot about blackjack, poker, tournament play, and sports betting, and he's one of the world's experts on online casinos (though he laments that there haven't been any good questions about Web-based gambling of late).
Question of the Day is managed by Jessica Roe, a thirty-something British born and bred Las Vegas transplant, who's Huntington Press' Web-content manager. She fields the questions, corresponds with the submitters (no doubt many of you have had some personal dealings with her), forwards questions to the appropriate experts for answering, handles the results of the occasional polls conducted on QoD, is in continuous touch with QoD research resources (the long list, spanning everyone from the Miss America Pageant to the FBI, appeared in the QoD you refer to), and writes many of the answers. She relishes the more esoteric questions about casino carpets, celebrity graves, casino smells, commemorative bricks, and the origins of keno, together with those that require compiling reams of data from various sources and preparing epic surveys on Las Vegas subjects as various as hookah lounges, gambling songs, which casinos give free blackjack lessons, where to eat escargots or drink hard cider, and of course, afternoon teas in Las Vegas. She also takes on the how-tos, such as how an up-and-coming band can get a Las Vegas gig, or hiring a showgirl to sing happy birthday at a dinner celebration, or recommending a balloon ride over the city. Also, in a past life, Jessica was a producer for various TV production companies, so she handles all the questions on visual media and is responsible for finding and adding the pictures that periodically accompany QoD answers.
As far as the outside experts are concerned, for the full list of our panel of contributors, who include Max Rubin, Bob Dancer, Jean Scott, and Stanford Wong to name a few, click here.
Note from Jessica: Although we don't want to get too mushy or self-congratulatory here, I would like to point out that this answer was penned by Deke, who I feel is being overly modest in his autobiographical note. With his inimitable wit, irreverent style, and boundless knowledge, I decree that he shall henceforth be known as the QoDfather!
