His specialty was articles about ordinary people and through the decades he travelled over Dalmatia chronicling many aspects of its life.

All this helped Smoje become one of the most respected and more popular writers of former Yugoslavia, as well as arguably the greatest humourist of Croatian literature.

In 1980 Smoje tried to repeat the success with Velo misto, a more ambitious project chronicling life in Split between 1910 and 1947.

When Tuđman's supporter Miroslav Kutle took over Slobodna Dalmacija in 1993, Smoje began to write for the satirical weekly Feral Tribune.

Semi-official snub of Miljenko Smoje ended in late 1990s when his shows were allowed to be aired on Croatian Radiotelevision.