William D. Smith, a former New York Times business reporter who later worked for Exxon, died earlier this month at the age of 79.
Daniel Slotnik of the Times writes, “As a business reporter, Mr. Smith, who joined The Times in 1962, covered the energy crisis in the early 1970s and accompanied the tanker Manhattan on the first successful commercial voyage through the Northwest Passage, a trans-Arctic shipping route that greatly sped up the transportation of Alaskan oil.
“He also wrote about finance, computers and automobiles before leaving The Times in 1977 to become Exxon’s senior public affairs adviser.
“He was sorely tested in that job when he addressed accusations of negligence against the company after the tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling tens of millions of gallons of oil in one of the worst man-made ecological disasters of the 20th century.”
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