Lesley Weidenbener: One of the greats has made his way home

One of the best reporters I have ever known died this week. Mike Smith was not a Pulitzer Prize winner. He never completed a yearlong project that sent the bad guys to jail. He never turned a story into a best-selling book.

Instead, Mike wrote important, impactful stories every day through a career that started in 1989 at United Press International and ended at The Montana Standard in Butte, Montana, where his final headline, published posthumously, read, “A 12-year-old girl was raped. A lawyer says it took Montana CPS 6 months to contact police.”

I met Mike in 1996, when The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne assigned me to cover the Indiana Statehouse and Mike was the chief Statehouse correspondent for the Associated Press. We became fast friends and confidantes, often teaming up to cover big stories and events, even as we worked for different news organizations.

Mike was everything a great reporter should be. Urgent, dogged, accurate and fair. He often wrote three or four stories a day about the state’s most important issues, filling newspapers with copy that helped inform Hoosiers about their lawmakers and legislation.

We worked together at the Statehouse for 16 years and developed one of the strongest, most important friendships of both of our lives. Even after Mike moved west, first to Oklahoma and eventually to Montana, we kept in close contact. We bounced story ideas off each other. We talked each other through ethics questions and reporting barriers. We exchanged advice about work and life difficulties.

We shared a similar outlook on journalism. We believed it was our job to present facts to readers — with context and analysis, where appropriate — and let readers make up their minds about legislation, an election, action by public officials, etc. Mike didn’t — and I don’t — believe it’s a reporter’s job to take sides or sway public opinion.

That never stopped Mike from pushing to get to the truth, expose wrongdoing and hold public officials to account. He encouraged everyone he worked with to do the same.

That approach earned Mike incredible respect here in Indiana — among his colleagues and among the people he covered. It did the same in Montana, where Mike worked for 13 years covering government, politics and the courts.

I know The Montana Standard staff will miss Mike’s determination and wit — even if they won’t miss some of his fiery outbursts, usually born out of a sense that something or someone wasn’t being treated fairly. I saw plenty of those over time.

Those grew out of passion for his work but also for his life. If Mike cared about something, he cared about it intensely. He loved the Dallas Cowboys, the Washington Capitals, the mountains, the snow, cherries picked straight from the tree, fall leaves, bandanas and Rush.

And he loved dogs. Outside his family, Mike loved dogs the most. From the first dog he had of his own (Barney, who hung with him at the college newspaper) through Cedar and Sailor Man and then to Barklee and Keeper, the precious two he left behind, Mike believed that dogs were God’s greatest gift to man.

Mike wrote a column after Sailor’s death that I keep thinking about. “So through my tears, I said goodbye and told him I’d be home soon and we’d never have to be apart again.”

He’s home now.•

__________

Weidenbener is editor and assistant publisher of IBJ and The Indiana Lawyer. Reach her at [email protected].