Terry Smith retired from his newspaper career in spring 2020 after working for 34 years at The Athens (Ohio) News, all but one of them as editor of the twice-weekly alternative/community newspaper. Before his 1986 return to Athens – where he had secured a journalism (BSJ) degree at Ohio University in 1977 – Smith worked as a reporter for small and mid-sized newspapers in Ironton, Ohio; Tucson, Arizona; McCall, Idaho; Cortez, Colorado; and Wheeling, West Virginia.
Between 2000 and 2011, Smith also served as an adjunct instructor in Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism, teaching the required news-writing course. He returned to the Scripps School in the fall of 2024 to teach the Precision Language course.
Over his years at The Athens News, Smith recruited and managed hundreds of Ohio University journalism and VisCom students as freelance writers, editors and photographers. While editing the newspaper, Smith also reported and wrote hundreds of news stories, covering everything from regional environmental coverage to local and state politics to local arts and entertainment.
Between 2011 and 2024, Smith moonlighted with various online copy-editing, SEO and blogging side-gigs. For several of those years, Smith wrote or edited thousands of keyword-packed HVAC blogs (despite the disability of lacking even a shred of real-world technical know-how).
During Smith’s final five years editing The Athens News, the newspaper – finally granted eligibility to compete in the Ohio News Media Association’s annual newspaper awards competition – won dozens of awards in the highest-circulation weekly newspaper category, including Best Weekly Newspaper in 2016 and 2018. Smith won multiple individual awards, including for his weekly column, editorials, headlines and page layout.
Since Smith left The Athens News in 2020, the Ohio Capital Journal, a statewide news nonprofit, has published many of his commentaries.