By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 29, 2007; D01
The Washington Examiner's new editor, veteran newsman Stephen G. Smith, has one of the more impressive résumés in Washington journalism: top jobs at all three major newsweeklies, writing and editing gigs at big newspapers and glossy magazines, and a turn at a prestigious think tank.
So why, then, is he leaving his latest job as head of the Houston Chronicle's Washington bureau to take over the two-year-old tabloid Examiner, which has a staff of 55 and is given away free?
"I think the Examiner represents a new model of newspapering that really reflects how people want their papers organized, what sort of content they want and how they want [the papers] delivered," Smith said Friday. "I look at life as an adventure. This is an opportunity to do something new and stretch my talent."
At the same time, Smith said he had increasingly thought that his strengths and interests as a journalist no longer aligned with what the Houston paper wanted out of its Washington bureau.
"I've been here a little over two years, and the newspaper landscape has changed dramatically," Smith said. "Now the paper is wanting more enterprise stories, and that's a tricky word. It means different things to different people."
Like all U.S. newspapers, the Chronicle has had tough times, with circulation and advertising declines. Most papers are beefing up their Web sites and rethinking their coverage in an attempt to make themselves more relevant to readers. For many large papers, that has meant de-emphasizing prestige (and expensive) coverage -- such as foreign and Washington bureaus -- in favor of highly local coverage.
Traditionally, the Washington bureaus of large papers such as the Chronicle have covered the classic Washington stories -- the president's State of the Union address, changes in Congress and so on.
But the Chronicle and other regional papers with Washington bureaus are now telling their capital staffs to move away from such pack coverage and write enterprise -- or original -- stories on topics of interest to their readers back home that no other publications are likely to cover.
In other words, goes the thinking, the Chronicle can print a wire-service story about the State of the Union address. But only Chronicle reporters will focus on specific stories about energy, immigration and other important Texas issues.
Such a strategy is radically different from what Smith signed up for when he took over the Chronicle's Washington bureau in November 2004, he agreed Friday. "He was very candid about feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the new directions we're going in," said Chronicle blogger and columnist Julie Mason, describing Smith's explanation to his staff for his departure. "He's more of a traditional newsman."
Mason was the Chronicle's White House reporter until the paper made her a blogger last year, leaving the bureau with no beat reporter to cover the presidency.
At the Examiner, Smith said he plans to add reporters and aggressively cover the White House, Congress and national security.
The Chronicle's 10-person Washington bureau was the latest stop on Smith's peripatetic career. In addition to his career tour of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, Smith edited National Journal and was the founding editor of Civilization magazine. In newspapering, he was the Washington news editor for the former Knight Ridder chain, and worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe.
He sits on the Council on Foreign Relations and was vice president for communications at the Brookings Institution.
He will start at the Examiner on Feb. 5.
The Examiner was launched in 2005 by Philip F. Anschutz, a Denver entrepreneur who made his money in oil. The previous year, Anschutz bought the San Francisco Examiner and began expanding the nameplate, thus far to Washington and Baltimore. The Washington Examiner gives away 260,000 copies a day, 206,000 of which are delivered to Washington area homes chosen for their desirable demographics.
Smith was recruited for the Examiner job by a headhunting firm. His interview with the intensely private Anschutz took place in an airplane hanger at Dulles International Airport, after the billionaire flew in on his private jet from New York.
The politics of the two men align. Anschutz is conservative; Smith describes himself as "to the right of the journalism spectrum, which I've always thought puts me in the middle of where most people are," he said.
Smith is a graduate of Deerfield Academy and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to being renowned for line-editing brilliance and wordsmithery, Smith is known for his bespoke suits and patrician manner, which have brought him the nicknames "Suspenders," for the braces he likes to wear, and "Thurston," after the shipwrecked multimillionaire of "Gilligan's Island." He is married to Sally Bedell Smith, author of the Kennedy White House book "Grace and Power."
As an editor, Smith "is one of the loveliest, most writerly editors I've ever worked for," Mason said. "He touches your copy and just makes it shine."
