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Evan Smith

Evan Smith's Profile Photo

Evan Smith is a senior adviser at Emerson Collective, for which he advises nonprofit local news orgs around the country. He’s also a senior adviser at the Texas Tribune, the pioneering nonprofit digital news organization he cofounded in 2009 and led for more than thirteen years as CEO; a Distinguished Fellow in Journalism at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy; and a contributing writer at the Atlantic. Previously he spent eighteen years at Texas Monthly, including nine years as the magazine’s editor in chief and a year as its president. Evan is the host of Overheard with Evan Smith, a weekly half-hour interview program that airs on PBS stations around the country. A native of New York, he's a graduate of Hamilton College, which awarded him an honorary degree in 2023, and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, which inducted him into its Hall of Achievement in 2006.

242 Articles

Business|
September 30, 2005

Red McCombs

“I’ve had my failures and my mistakes. I don’t dwell on them. So I don’t have anything dragging me down at any given time.”

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Politics & Policy|
August 31, 2005

Anita Perry

“He’s probably stronger now than when we were younger, but I’ve changed that same way. And we’ve probably gotten more conservative as we’ve gotten older.”

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Business|
May 31, 2005

Boone Pickens

“The record’s clean. I’m sure that I haven’t done everything that everyone would like me to do. But I’ve never hurt anybody.”

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Business|
March 1, 2005

John Mackey

“I used to resent the fact that people romanticize Whole Foods. I always wanted to shake them and say, ‘Gosh, we’re just a grocery store!’ ”

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Sports|
February 1, 2005

Marsha Sharp

“A lot of people are perfect fits for universities. I’m a perfect fit for Texas Tech. I understand West Texas. I am West Texas.”

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Business|
December 1, 2004

Gordon Bethune

“It isn’t about cheap. You can make a pizza so cheap nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap nobody will fly it. It’s about the product.”

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Film & TV|
September 30, 2004

Mike Judge

“You can’t make all of TV and movies kid-safe. If you do, we’re all going to be watching the Care Bears. I think there should be things that are just for adults.”

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Books|
August 31, 2004

Larry McMurtry

“I like to go out at night. I like to sit in a nice room and look at beautiful women. I don't want to just sit on my back porch drinking scotch, and there isn’t much more to do in Archer City.”

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Sports|
July 31, 2004

David Carr

“We’re a real NFL football team, and we can go out and make plays. We have talent. We can beat teams. It’s not a fluke if we beat the Cowboys.”

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Politics & Policy|
June 30, 2004

Susan Combs

“Billy can go to a 7-Eleven and buy a soft drink and must pay sales tax, but Billy goes to school, buys a soft drink, and pays no sales tax.”

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Arts & Entertainment|
May 31, 2004

Bill Moyers

“War is always a great reinforcer of secrecy, but a war on terror is the most insidious threat to openness—you can always claim, without having to explain why, that something can't be public.”

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Business|
April 30, 2004

Michael Dell

The 39-year-old computer mogul on stepping down as CEO of the company he founded, why he doesn’t play footsie with the press (hey!), and the product line he should have launched years ago.

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Behind the Lines|
April 30, 2004

AWOL

Are the Texas Democrats deserters?

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Lives + Times|
April 1, 2004

Nice and Easy

"I have a very comfortable lifestyle as a jazz musician. Every day is a Saturday for me."

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Atsbox|
January 1, 2004

STRAIGHT TALK

THE DEFENSE NEVER RESTS Harvard law professor and criminal-defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, whose list of clients has included Patty Hearst, Michael Milken, Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, and O. J. Simpson, will be speaking in Austin on January 15.There seem to be a lot of high-profile cases going on all at

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Reporter|
November 1, 2003

Barbara Bush

The former first lady on her new book, how she writes— and why she never liked Alice in Wonderland.

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Feature|
November 1, 2003

Anchor Away

What Walter Cronkite really thinks about cable TV shoutfests, the length of network newscasts, and (ahem) Jayson Blair.

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Travel & Outdoors|
July 31, 2003

San Diego, California

AFTER WHAT MY DAUGHTER STERNLY reminds me are almost but not quite six and a half years of parenting, I have a few rules for taking the family away for the weekend: First, fly direct (because, these days, having to make a connection is an agita-inducing proposition). Second, spend no

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George H.W. Bush
Politics & Policy|
June 30, 2003

FLFW Will See You Now

In a rare interview, George H.W. Bush—a.k.a. the Former Leader of the Free World—disses Newt and the Dixie Chicks, muses on the restorative powers of Maine, and (who'd have imagined?) has nice things to say about the current occupant of the Oval Office.

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Atsbox|
April 30, 2003

Straight Talk

ENTER LAUGHING On May 19 actor-director Carl Reiner, who created the Emmy award-winning series The Dick Van Dyke Show, will interview Neil Simon for the debut of the Brinker International Lecture Series, in Dallas. What’s the difference between the comedy of your day and the comedy of today? The

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Atsbox|
April 1, 2003

Straight Talk

ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ Author Robert Caro, whose tome on Lyndon Johnson’s legislative years, Master of the Senate, won the 2002 National Book Award, will be speaking at Arts and Letters Live, in Dallas, on April 4. Rumor has it that you and your wife will be moving to

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Atsbox|
February 1, 2003

Straight Talk

PROUD MARY MARY MATALIN, until recently a counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, and her husband, political commentator James Carville, will speak at the George Bush Presidential Library Center, in College Station, February 28. You’ve now worked in the administrations of two presidents with wives who are Texas women. What

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A Few Words With. . .|
January 1, 2003

John Lee Hancock

The director of the new Alamo movie takes on the storied battle—and the eyes of Texas are upon him.

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Atsbox|
January 1, 2003

Straight Talk

THE CABLE GUY Conservative political columnist Robert Novak, the co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, will speak at the University of Texas at Tyler’s R. Don Cowan Fine and Performing Arts Center on January 30.You’ve cultivated this image of yourself as tough, even mean, but everyone I know in Washington says you’re

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Media|
August 31, 2002

Pro vs. Chron

How the new editor of the Houston Chronicle is trying to turn the page on the paper's past.

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Reporter|
May 31, 2002

Mike Moses

Dallas schools superintendent Mike Moses makes progress—and more money than anyone else.

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Atsbox|
April 1, 2002

Straight Talk

Nanu, Nanu Academy award- winning actor and comedian Robin Williams brings his first one-man show in fifteen years to the University of Texas at Austin’s Performing Arts Center on April 9, the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas on April 10, and the Verizon Wireless Theater in Houston on

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Atsbox|
February 1, 2002

Straight Talk

Funny girl Janeane Garofalo, the actress and stand-up comedienne, plays the Empire Theatre in San Antonio on February 1 and the Paramount Theatre in Austin on February 2.You spent some time growing up in Houston, didn’t you? We were there on and off starting in the early seventies. My dad

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