Hedrick Smith

Hedrick Smith
File:Hedrick Smith B&W.jpg
Born	July 9, 1933 (87 years old) Kilmacolm, Scotland
Nationality	American
Education	Williams College Balliol College, Oxford Harvard University
Years active	1959 - present
Employer(s)	The New York Times (1962-1988) Hedrick Smith Productions (1989-2012)
Notable work	The Russians, The Power Game: How Washington Works, The Pentagon Papers (co-authored), The New Russians, Rethinking America, Who Stole the American Dream?
Awards	Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting Pulitzer Prize for Public Service 2x Emmy award winner Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award (1991)
Honours	Nieman Fellow at Harvard (1969-1970) Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University (1955-56)
Website	www.ReclaimTheAmericanDream.org

Hedrick Smith (born July 9, 1933) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy award-winning producer and correspondent who has established himself over the past 50 years as one of America’s premier journalists.  After serving 26 years with The New York Times from 1962-88 as correspondent, editor and bureau chief in both Moscow and Washington, Smith moved into television in 1989, reporting and producing more than 50 hours of long form documentaries for PBS over the next 25 years on topics from the inside story of the terrorists who mounted the 9/11 attacks and Gorbachev’s perestroika to Wall Street, Walmart and The Democracy Rebellion of grassroots citizen reform movements. Smith has authored five best-selling books including The Russians, The Power Game: How Washington Works, and Who Stole the American Dream, and co-authored several other books, including The Pentagon Papers and Reagan: The Man, the President. Smith is currently Executive Editor of the website ReclaimTheAmericanDream.org and the YouTube channel The People vs. The Politicians.

Early life and education

Smith was born in Kilmacolm, Scotland. He was educated at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut and at Williams College, where he earned a B.A. in American history and literature. After completing his studies at Williams, Smith did graduate work in PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) as a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University. In 1969, he won a Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard University, concentrating in Russian studies.

Newspaper career

Smith’s career in print journalism began in the 1950s, with summer jobs as a cub reporter for The Greenville (S.C.) News. After college and serving three years in the U.S. Air Force, Smith joined United Press International in 1959, serving in bureaus in Memphis, Nashville and Atlanta, 1959-62. In the early 1960s, Smith began his long tenure with The New York Times covering Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis and the civil rights struggle including hot spots such as Birmingham, the desegregation of Ole Miss, and the March on Washington. As a foreign correspondent, Smith reported on the Vietnam War in Saigon (1963-64), on the Middle East region based in Cairo (1964-1966), and on the Cold War from both Washington (1967-70) and Moscow (1971-1974).

In 1971, as chief diplomatic correspondent, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that produced the Pentagon Papers series. In 1974, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting from Russia and Eastern Europe. In 1975-76, Smith became deputy national editor of the Times and then moved on to serve as Washington Bureau Chief (1976-79) and Chief Washington Correspondent (1979-1988). During his Washington tours he covered five American presidents and their administrations.

Television productions

For PBS since 1989, Hedrick Smith has created 26 prime-time specials and mini-series on such varied topics as terrorism, Wall Street, Soviet perestroika, Wal-Mart, Enron, tax evasion, educational reform, health care, the environment, jazz greats Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck, and Washington’s power game.

Smith’s documentary work has won television’s major awards. Two of his Frontline programs, The Wall Street Fix and Can You Afford to Retire? won Emmys and two others, Critical Condition and Tax Me If You Can were nominated. Twice he has won or shared the duPont-Columbia Gold Baton, or grand prize, for the year’s best public affairs program on U.S. television – for Inside Gorbachev’s USSR in 1990, and for Inside the Terror Network in 2002. Along with the George Polk, George Peabody and Sidney Hillman awards for reportorial excellence, his programs have won two national public service awards from journalism’s Sigma Delta Chi.

Books

Smith's book The Russians (1976), based on his years as New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief from 1971-74, was a No. 1 American best-seller. It has been translated into 16 languages and widely used in university courses. His next book, The Power Game: How Washington Works (1988), was another major best-seller. In a video tour of the White House, C-span filmed the book sitting on President Clinton’s bedside table. And it became a political bible for many newly elected members of Congress and their staffs.

Nearly three decades after his first Moscow tour, Smith returned to Russia to witness the crumbling of Soviet Communism and the break up of the old Soviet Union. In The New Russians (1991), Smith gave a first-hand account of Mikhail Gorbachev’s dramatic political and economic reforms known as perestroika.

Over the past 25 years, Smith has focused on the American domestic scene, producing two books – Rethinking America (1995) and Who Stole the American Dream? (2012) that provide extended reporting and analysis on the causes of sharply rising economic inequality in the United States and its increasingly dysfunctional political system as well as efforts to restore greater fairness, transparency and inclusion in both the American economy and American politics.

Awards and honors

In 1971, he was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its work on the Pentagon Papers. He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1974 for stories from Russia and Eastern Europe.

Smith has also won many television awards. His Frontline shows, The Wall Street Fix and Can You Afford to Retire? won Emmys and two other awards and his Frontline shows, Critical Condition and Tax Me If You Can were nominated. He has won or shared the Columbia-Dupont Gold Baton for the year's best public affairs program on U.S. television twice. He has also won the George Polk, George Peabody and Hillman awards for his excellence in reporting along with two national public service awards.

Organizations

Smith has been a Nieman Fellow.

List of PBS productions

• Frontline: After Gorbachev's USSR
• Frontline: Bigger than Enron
• Frontline: Can You Afford to Retire
• Frontline: Dr. Solomon's Dilemma
• Frontline: Guns, Tanks, and Gorbachev
• Frontline: Inside the Terror Network
• Frontline: Is Walmart Good for America?
• Frontline: Tax Me If You Can
• Frontline: The Wall Street Fix
• Frontline: Poisoned Waters

Bibliography

• The Russians (1976) ISBN 978-0-8129-0521-2
• The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War (co-authored with Neil Sheehan, 1971) ISBN 0-552-64917-1
• The Power Game: How Washington Works (1987)
• The New Russians (1990)
• The Media and the Gulf War (1992)
• Rethinking America (1995)
• Who Stole the American Dream? (2012)

References

• Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Saigon, Cairo, and Moscow, by Bill Lucey. NewspaperAlum.com, January 14, 2013

External links

• Hedrick Smith Productions
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• LibraryThing author profile
• Biography
• Radio interview WSLR w/Doug Miles on YouTube