Red Smith was a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame when Grantland Rice committed to paper—and to posterity—words as fabled in sports journalism as any ever written. The Notre Dame
football team’s 13–7 triumph over Army in New York on October 18, 1924, inspired Rice to envision
parallels of Biblical proportions:
“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real namesare Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.”
Years later, Smith, a 1927 Notre Dame graduate, would become—like Rice—a new York–based sportswriter. When Rice died in 1954, Smith’s column departed from his customary third-person prose poem to emphasize the individual and collective loss of a man twenty-five years his senior.
“Coming home from vacation is different this time. New York isn’t the same town at all. Grantland Rice isn’t here. This isn’t going to be maudlin but it has to be personal. Grantland Rice was the greatest man I have known, the greatest talent, the greatest gentleman. The most treasured privilege I have had in this world was knowing him and going about with him as his friend. I shall be grateful all my life.
“I do not mourn for him, who welcomed peace. I mourn for us.”
Typically, though, friendship and admiration didn’t inhibit Smith’s wry, reportorial perspective. As Roger Kahn describes in his memoir Into My Own (2006), “Over drinks Red Smith liked to ask archly, ‘From what angle was Granny watching the game if he saw the Notre Dame backfield outlined against a blue-gray sky?’ Further, there was no precipice below the Polo Grounds; the old ball park actually sat under the precipice called Coogan’s Bluff.”
Smith saw life—particularly sporting life with its copy-colorful characters—whole. To honor him and his literary accomplishment (in style, originality and wit) Notre Dame conducts the Red Smith Lectureship in Journalism. Begun the year after his death in 1982, the series is a continuing tribute that seeks to offer—like Smith’s own work—enduring lessons about journalism’s value and values.
For the 2007 Smith Lecture, distinguished broadcast correspondent and anchor Judy Woodruff reflects on Smith’s timeless relevance and asks a timely (as well as critically relevant) question: “Are Journalists Obsolete?”
Woodruff is a senior correspondent on PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where she also serves as editor of 2008 political coverage. Chief Washington correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour from 1983 until 1993, she returned to The NewsHour in 2007.
Between her tenures at PBS, Woodruff was an anchor at CNN, conducting the daily program Inside Politics for a dozen years. From 1977 to 1982, she was chief White House correspondent for NBC News.
In her career, Woodruff has earned many journalistic honors, including an Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award. In 1995, she won the CableACE Award for Best Newscaster and in 2003 the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation.
Woodruff has taught at her alma mater Duke University and served as a visiting fellow at Harvard University. Her close attention to the political views of young people resulted in the PBS documentary, “Generation Next: Speak Up. Be Heard.” A second “Generation Next” documentary is currently being produced.
For her lecture at Notre Dame on April 12, 2007, Woodruff was introduced by Terence Smith, a colleague at The NewsHour and former correspondent for the New York Times and CBS News. Like his father, Smith is a Notre Dame alumnus, and he spent two weeks back on campus as the University’s Journalist-in-Residence during the 2006-2007 academic year.
The Red Smith Lectureship takes place and is committed to paper for posterity through the continuing generosity of Susan and John McMeel of Kansas City, Missouri. John is chairman of Andrews McMeel Universal, the parent company of Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes columns, features, and comic strips appearing throughout the media today. A 1957 graduate of Notre Dame, he is an inaugural member of the Advisory Committee of the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics & Democracy.
