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Steven A Smith

Steven A. Smith is clinical associate professor emeritus in the School of Journalism and Mass Media at the University of Idaho having retired from full-time teaching at the end of May 2020. He writes a weekly opinion column. Smith is former editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. As editor, Smith supervised all news and editorial operations on all platforms until his resignation in October 2008. Prior to joining The Spokesman-Review, Smith was editor for two years at the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon, and was for five years editor and vice president of The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 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 M.A. in communication from The Ohio State University where he was a Kiplinger Fellow, and a B.S. in journalism from the University of Oregon.
Commentary

Roe Decision Threatens Other Rights

But Witt, as is the case with most who follow such issues, understands the court’s rationale might now be used to go after other rights, such as same-sex marriage, consensual gay sexual activity, provision of contraceptive services, even the right of couples to marry if partners are of a different race.
Commentary

The Age of Paranoia

But the age we live in tells me otherwise. An age of paranoia. American paranoia.
Commentary

The Paths We Take

But remembering is a good thing. In delivering a couple of graduation talks many, many years ago, I tried to explain to students, whose lives lay ahead, that the lessons learned in college, often outside class, would inform their futures in unknowable ways.
Commentary

The America That Never Was

There are forces at work in this country using everything in their power to return us to the America that never existed, to the America of Beaver Cleaver and Andy Griffith.
Commentary

Thoughts with No Prayers

The number of dead resulting from gun violence of all kinds is staggering. There were 692 mass shootings in 2021, the most since 2014, when the Gun Violence Archive began keeping records.
Commentary

Memorial Day Is a Day to Honor All Who Have Died

Like most Americans, I grew up with a Memorial Day viewed as a long weekend at the start of summer season and not a sacred commemoration of the country’s war dead.
Commentary

There are two seasons – winter and cigar season

Cigar smoking is as much about ritual as flavor. The cutting of the tip, the perfect light, and production of a good, symmetrical ash are part of the experience. Amateurs smoke too quickly, produce a hotter burn, and destroy the flavor. A cigar must be savored, slowly.
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