Smith’s career in journalism began in the 1950s after graduating from Williams College when he worked as a young reporter for The Greenville (S.C.) News. He went on to complete graduate studies as a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University, serve three years in the U.S. Airforce, and complete a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard.
Throughout his prolific 26-year career for the New York Times, Smith reported on prominent world events like the civil rights movement, the Vietnam and Cold War, and six presidential administrations. He was even on the Pulitzer Prize-winning team of reporters that produced the Pentagon Papers.
His second Pulitzer Prize came in 1974 for his 1973 coverage of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe with headlines like “Prestige of Stalin Now Reviving,” and “Summer on the Baltic: sun, Sulphur and Song.” From 1971 to 1974, Smith acted as the NYT Moscow Bureau Chief, a role which inspired his 1976 best-seller “The Russians.”
Since 1989, Smith has worked with PBS to produce more than 20 documentary prime-time specials and miniseries. Two of his PBS Frontline episodes, “The Wall Street Fix,” and “Can You Afford to Retire?” earned him Emmy awards. Continuing his success in visual media, Smith’s documentary programs “Inside Gorbachev’s USSR,”(1990) and “Inside the Terror Network,”(2002) both earned him the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Gold Baton award for the year’s best public affairs programming.
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