(AURN News) — Ronald Smothers, a veteran journalist who spent 35 years at The New York Times covering protest, politics and racial change, died April 24 in Wilmington, Delaware. He was 79.
Smothers began his career during the uprisings of the late 1960s, reporting for The Washington Post on the 1967 Newark rebellion and unrest in Washington after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Hired by The New York Times in 1972, he covered New York politics and Jesse Jackson’s groundbreaking 1984 presidential campaign, and later served as Atlanta bureau chief during the 1996 Olympic bombing.
Smothers saw journalism as a calling and pushed newsrooms to reflect Black political and social life.
After leaving The Times in 2007, he taught journalism at the University of Delaware. He is survived by two children and a granddaughter.
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