FIT TO LEAD
Student-Athlete Conference

CLAIRE SMITH

Claire Smith covered all things baseball as an award-winning reporter, columnist, and content editor for 40 years before becoming the founding executive director of Claire Smith Center for Sports Media at Temple University. She is also now an assistant professor of practice at Temple’s Klein College of Media and Communication.​ Smith was born in Philadelphia in 1953 within blocks of Temple, her alma mater. She later worked within miles of her hometown at her first newspaper employer — The Bucks County Courier Times. She soon moved on to The Philadelphia Bulletin where her dream of becoming a sports reporter became a reality.

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Smith went on to work for the Hartford Courant, covering the New York Yankees from 1983 to 1987, the first female to have a full-time Major League beat. She later worked as a columnist for The New York Times from 1991 to 1998 and was an editor and columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1998 to 2007. She rounded out her career as a content editor at ESPN, 2007-2021.

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Smith traveled the world covering baseball, with assignments as wide-ranging as labor negotiations in The Oval Office to witnessing the first-ever Major League games played in Europe and Puerto Rico. She served as content editor for ESPN entities when the network traveled to Cuba to cover a game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Cuban national team. There, she prepped the ESPN on-air crew for its in-game interview with President Barack Obama.​ Smith remains active in the journalism field, as a contributing columnist, most recently with The Philadelphia Inquirer.

​The veteran reporter’s achievements were recognized by her peers when she voted the 2017 recipient of The Baseball Writers Association’s Career Excellence Award; the first woman and fourth African American to be so honored.​ Smith has also been recognized for her pioneering efforts and career milestones by her alma mater as well as The Association for Women in Sports Media, The National Association of Black Journalists, The Jackie Robinson Foundation, The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and The Josh Gibson Foundation.​ She is also the recipient of the Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award, considered the highest honor in sports journalism.

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Smith will be one of three of the nation’s most prominent Black journalists to be honored as the first inductees in the Black Sportswriters Hall of Fame. The Hall is to be located at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

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Smith was among the subjects of A League of Her Own, a short biographical documentary about the women who shattered glass ceilings throughout sport media. The film was screened in 2018 at the Hall of Fame's annual Baseball Film Festival. She was also one of the women pioneers featured in ESPN’s Nine for 9 series, in the episode entitled Let Them Wear Towels.