Terence Smith

2020 Communicator award

Terence Smith is an award-winning journalist who has been a political reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and television analyst over a five-decade career with The New York Times, CBS News, and the PBS NewsHour. He was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and has won two Emmys and a George Peabody award. 

He is a second-generation Domer: his father was the prominent sports columnist Red Smith, who grew up in football-crazed Green Bay, Wis., in the time of Curly Lambeau and Jim Crowley. Red Smith attended Notre Dame starting in 1923 and satisfied his physical education requirement by running the mile—poorly—on the track team coached by Knute Rockne. Red Smith later received an honorary degree from Notre Dame and won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1976. He has been called “the greatest sportswriter of two eras.”

Terence Smith, a 1960 ND graduate, majored in American Studies with an emphasis in journalism. Later, Smith and his sister, Kit O’Meara, created The Red Smith Scholarship at Notre Dame, and the Red Smith Lecture Series that attracted speakers from Jim Lehrer to Tim Russert to Frank McCourt.

In 2013, Terence Smith was inducted into the Society of Professional Journalists’ Hall of Fame. He is the author of the memoir, Four Wars, Five Presidents: A Reporter’s Journey from Jerusalem to Saigon to the White House, published by Rowman and Littlefield on Oct. 15, 2021.

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