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Sports Illustrated's Gary Smith Named College Of Charleston Distinguished Communicator For 2006

Sports Illustrated feature writer Gary Smith will receive the College of Charleston's coveted Distinguished Communicators Award on April 12. The presentation/lecture will begin at 7 p.m. in Sottile Theatre on campus. The event is free and open to the public

Smith is widely considered to be one of the finest magazine writers in America. A recent survey of Associated Press sports editors selected Smith as the country's top sportswriter. His distinguished career at SI has been punctuated by a number of in-depth personality profiles, including pieces on Muhammad Ali's entourage, Jim Valvano's battle with cancer, and the wives of two Cleveland Indians baseball players who lost their husbands in a fatal boating accident. He also wrote an article that proved the inspiration to the major motion picture "Radio," starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

The Charleston resident has won four National Magazine Awards. His stories have appeared in the annual Best American Sportswriting anthologies eight times, the most by any writer. The editor, David Halberstam, selected Smith's profile of Tiger Woods (entitled "The Chosen One") for The Best American Sportswriting of the Century. In January 2000, Writer's Digest named Smith one of the "50 Writers to Watch" in the coming decade.

Smith, a 1975 graduate of LaSalle University, began his career writing for the Wilmington News-Journal, and followed with positions at Philadelphia Daily News, New York Daily News, and Inside Sports. He has also written for Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Life magazines. Beyond the Game: The Collected Sportswriting of Gary Smith, was published in 2001.

The Distinguished Communicators Series debuted in 2003 with a lecture by longtime NBC White House correspondent John Palmer. In 2004, Nickelodeon Chief of Staff Marva Smalls was the featured speaker. Longtime U.S. Senator Ernest (Fritz) Hollings was honored last spring. The series is just one of the outreach programs sponsored by the College's Department of Communication, which has more than 800 majors in three concentrations: Corporate and Organizational Communication, Media Studies, and Communication Studies.

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