Media News

Former Free Press biz editor, Pulitzer winner dies at 93

David C. Smith

David C. Smith, a former business editor at the Detroit Free Press who was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the city’s 1967 riot, has died at the age of 93.

Jamie L. LaReau of The Free Press writes, “With a degree in hand, Smith embarked on a career in journalism working as a columnist for the Detroit Times, Toledo Blade and Wall Street Journal.

“Smith’s daughter Erin Millerschin told the Free Press that the family moved from California, where her father worked at The Wall Street Journal, to Detroit in 1964 for him to take a job as the business and financial editor at the Free Press, where he contributed to the coverage of the 1967 Detroit riot.

“‘He worked at the Detroit Free Press for six years,’ Millerschin said by email. ‘He used to take me and my sister Shannon to the Detroit Free Press on many Saturdays to check the final copy and presses. I still remember the smell of the Wonder Bread factory right off the freeway heading downtown from Birmingham and feeling VERY excited about being in the mix of the newsroom with my dad.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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