Keynote Speaker Steven A. Smith

Smith is former editor of The Spokesman-Review, a privately held newspaper in Spokane, WA., with a daily circulation of  89,000 and a Sunday circulation of 110,000 as well as a growing online, digital media and radio operations. As editor, Smith supervised all news and editorial operations on all platforms with a staff ranging from more than 130 in 2002 to 104 at the time of his resignation on Oct. 1, 2008.

He was named editor in July 2002. He resigned in October 2008 rather than implement a fourth staff reduction, the last a layoff of 25 percent of the news staff.

In the months following his resignation he has done some consulting, blogged at stillanewspaperman.com and begun work on a primer to news editing in the multi-platform, digital era. He hopes to eventually rejoin the workforce.

Prior to joining The Spokesman-Review, Smith was editor for two years of the Statesman Journal, a Gannett newspaper in Salem, OR.

Previously, he was editor and vice president of The Gazette, a Freedom Communications, Inc. newspaper in Colorado Springs, Co. He was named editor in October 1995 and vice president in 1997.

Before joining The Gazette, Smith served two years as assistant to the vice presidents/news for Knight-Ridder, Inc. in Miami.  He worked with Knight-Ridder’s 30 newspapers, developing training programs, producing critiques, assisting with strategic planning. He specialized in issues involving newsroom “change” and civic journalism.

Previously, he was managing editor at The Wichita Eagle and held a variety of positions at the St. Paul Pioneer Press.  Both were Knight-Ridder newspapers.  He also worked at the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis and the Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon.

Smith was chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors “Change” committee in 1997-98 and was a member of ASNE’s Credibility Think Tank. He is active in the Society of Professional Journalists. He has been a frequent lecturer on civic journalism and newsroom change for the Pew Center on Civic Journalism, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the American Press Institute and has lectured on newsroom training issues for the Freedom Forum. He served on the advisory board for the Pew Center on the States and is a member of the University of  Oregon School of Journalism and Communication Advancement Council and a former member Washington State University Murrow School of Communication Professional Advisory  Council. In recent years he has lectured on newspaper transparency and has trained journalists in Sweden, Norway and Ukraine. He has written on transparency for the Neiman Reports and has been published in Sweden.

He is a graduate of the Northwestern University Newspaper Management Center Advanced Executive Program and a mid-career development program at Duke University..

He holds an MA in communication from The Ohio State University where he was a Kiplinger fellow and a BS in journalism from the University of Oregon.

He is a Portland, Oregon native.

Smith has two children, Sam, who is 23 years old, and Alissa, who is 19.