William B. Smart, a straight-shooting journalist who steered the Deseret News for more than a decade and established a dogged investigative team that rocked Utah’s establishment by sniffing out scandal after scandal, died Wednesday.
He was 95.
Smart, who labored at the LDS Church-owned newspaper for more than 40 years, including 14 as editor and general manager, was on the cutting edge of environmental journalism, recalled former Deseret News environmental writer Joe Bauman.
And he was an advocate, first as an editorial writer and later as the editor guiding the paper’s news agenda and as a community leader.
“He was prominent in the effort to make Capitol Reef a national park,” Bauman said. “He set out certain goals for the paper, which became the basis of our editorial policy.”
High on the list was environmental reporting, Bauman said, “and he was a great mentor to me as a young reporter.”
“When I first bought my Jeep and drove it onto Regent Street in back of the Deseret News, he saw me and became really excited,” Bauman said. “He told me that would allow me to go to the wilder places of Utah and report on them”
Smart also instilled in Bauman a love of maps — “a love I still hold today.”
Smart was a leader in promoting the formation of the Jordan River Parkway, and he committed personal assets toward preserving open space.
“I got to know Bill when I became involved in the Friends of Alta to preserve the area from overdevelopment,” said Salt Lake City attorney and Democratic politician Pat Shea. “Bill’s property was the first property we bought that was dedicated to preserving open space.”
Shea and Smart also worked together to promote journalism ideals and ethics on the board of the Utah Headliners Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
“It is ironic,” Shea said, “that with the release of the movie ‘The Post’ about great journalism, and at a time when great journalism is being attacked as ‘fake news,’ that we now have the passing of one of the truly great journalists.”
After Smart became the newspaper’s editor in 1972, he organized a crack investigative team called Pinpoint that shook Utah’s old guard by exposing a series of scandals.
The group he put together included veteran reporter Bob Mullins — whose relentless reporting of a kidnapping and murder in 1962 earned the Deseret News a Pulitzer Prize — and two young, eager writers named Joe Costanzo and Dale Van Atta.
“The thing about Bill was he was courageous,” Costanzo said. “Before the Pinpoint team, the tendency was to be careful about what to report on the power structures in this state. He was willing to take the risk of offending people who previously could count on the News to not offend them.”
Pinpoint won its first investigative reporting award for a series of stories about equipment purchases in Salt Lake County government that benefited certain public officials. “After that,” Costanzo said, “it seemed the Pinpoint team won investigative journalism awards every year.”
“[Smart] certainly was a mentor to me,” said former Deseret News Managing Editor Lavarr Webb. “He tended to be more liberal personally than the paper’s editorial positions, but he upheld important values of journalism and strived to always print the truth.”
Webb, currently the publisher of utahpolicy.com, noted that Smart also “knew how to navigate with the powers that be, and he did a good job at that.”
Said longtime Deseret News reporter Lois Collins: “He was the most personable of professionals. He was a mentor and a friend, and he expected you to do your best.”
Smart launched his journalism career at a news service in Portland, Ore., in 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He joined the Deseret News in 1948, serving in various capacities before becoming an editorial writer in the 1950s and later editor.
Smart started the program “Civic Dialogue” on KUED-Channel 7. He wrote or edited nine books, including one about his grandfather, early Mormon colonizer William H. Smart. And he recently completed a volume of personal memoirs.
Born in Provo on June 27, 1922, he later married Donna Toland while he was on active duty for the Army Reserve during World War II. She survives him after more than 70 years of marriage.
