“I think we’ve been so timid in this business,” he says. “This timidity out there right now is just killing us…. I think that’s what fueled some of the anger that some of us brought to the civic-journalism movement.”
And he has nothing but disdain for the modern corporate-journalistic mantra — in this time of newsroom cutbacks — that newspapers can “do more with less.”
“We do less with less,” he snaps. “Bullshit … I think we’ve ceded the field to those people and it breaks my heart.”
When one looks at Smith’s resume — with stops in a number of mid-size markets — it’s hard not to wonder whether such an energetic and bright journalist might not have harmed his career with his outspoken embrace of unorthodox ideas.
“Maybe if he were a more conventional editor he would be running a newsroom in Portland or Seattle or Denver by now,” says NYU’s Rosen.
Having just turned 56, Smith jokes that “I feel 65, if anybody cares. This job’s getting tougher and tougher every day.” And even he thinks his maverick image may be starting to work against him.
“I might be less effective within the industry than I might have been in the past,” he acknowledges, “ ’cause I do so many goofy things that I think people [now] say ‘Oh, that’s Smith.’ ”
On the Web
Mark Jurkowitz's Media Log: http://www.thephoenix.com/medialog
Spokesman-Review:http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
The Pew Center for Civic Journalism: http://www.pewcenter.org/
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