Atlanta Journal-Constitution past publisher to speak at Clemson

Published: February 26, 2010

CLEMSON — For the smartphone generation, news needs to be now and wow, scaled to the pocket-sized window on their world. Many say newspapers cannot compete. Twitter’s 140-character messages are replacing 1,000-word reports. But don’t count newspapers out yet, says Jay Smith, former publisher of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Smith will share his views as part of Clemson University’s Calhoun Lecture Series.  His presentation is titled “Stop the Presses? We'd Better Not!”

Smith’s lecture will be presented at 7:30 p.m. March 4 in the Brooks Theatre. The program is free and open to the public.

Smith, 60, retired as president of Atlanta-based Cox Newspapers Inc. in 2008 after a 40-year career as a journalist.  Thirty-seven of those years were spent with Cox, where Smith started as a reporter at the company's first newspaper, The Dayton (Ohio) Daily News.  Smith became publisher of The Daily News in 1981, moving on to serve as publisher of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman in 1983, then as publisher of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1986-1992.  Smith was president of the Cox newspaper division until his retirement.  He oversaw 18 daily newspapers, 25 weeklies, Val-Pak, a national coupon distributor; and the Trader Publishing Company, which included Auto Trader and other classified publications.

Smith chaired the board of the Newspaper Association of America, the industry's trade organization, from 2006-2007, and was a board member of the Associated Press from 2003-2008.  He helped each of these organizations in pursuing a successful update of the 40-year-old federal Freedom-of-Information Act and a still-pending federal Shield Law for Journalists.  He is also a member of the advisory board to an international journalism program at the University of Georgia. 

Smith is married to Susan Shifres, whose cousin Scott Schiff is a professor of civil engineering at Clemson.

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