Tovia Smith
Tovia Smith is an award-winning NPR National Correspondent based in Boston, who's spent more than three decades covering news around New England and beyond.
Most recently, she's reported extensively on the #MeToo movement and campus sexual assault. She's also covered breaking news from the Newtown school shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent trial, as well as the capture, trial and later death of Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger. She has provided extensive coverage of gay marriage, and the sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church, including breaking the news of the Pope's secret meeting with survivors.
Throughout the years, Smith has brought to air the distinct voices of Boston area residents, whether those demanding the ouster of Cardinal Bernard Law, or those mourning the death of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. In her reporting on contentious issues like race relations, abortion, and juvenile crime, her reporting always pushes past the polemics, and advances the national conversation with more thoughtful, and thought-provoking, nuanced arguments from both — or all — sides.
Smith has traveled to New Hampshire to report on seven consecutive Primary elections, to the Gulf Coast after the BP oil spill, and to Ground Zero in New York City after the Sept. 11 attacks. With an empathic ear and an eye for detail, she tells the human stories that evoke the emotion and issues of the day. She has gone behind the bars of a prison to interview female prisoners who keep their babies with them while incarcerated, she's gone behind closed doors to watch a college admissions committee decide whom to admit, and she's embedded in a local orphanage to tell the stories of the children living there. Smith has also chronicled such personal tales as a woman's battle against obesity and a family's struggle to survive the recession of 2008.
Throughout her career, Smith has won dozens of national journalism awards including a Gracie award, the Casey Medal, the Unity Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Honorable Mention, Ohio State Award, Radio and Television News Directors Association Award, and numerous honors from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Public Radio News Directors Association, and the Associated Press.
Smith took a leave of absence from NPR in 1998 to help create and launch Here and Now, a daily news magazine co-produced by NPR and WBUR in Boston. As co-host of the program, she conducted live daily interviews on issues ranging from the impeachment of President Bill Clinton to allegations of sexual abuse in Massachusetts prisons, as well as regular features as varied as a round-up of emerging tech and a listener call-in for advice on workplace survival.
In 1996, Smith worked as a radio consultant and journalism instructor in Africa. She spent several months teaching and reporting in Ethiopia, Guinea, and Tunisia. She filed her first stories as an intern and then reporter for local affiliate WBUR in Boston beginning in 1987.
She is a graduate of Tufts University, with a degree in international relations.
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Despite the decisions by the federal bankruptcy judge, Sandy Hook families are likely to get only a tiny fraction of the nearly $1.5 billion in damages Jones owes them for his lies about the 2012 school shooting. -
Alex Jones has asked a judge to convert his bankruptcy to a liquidation, in order to start paying some of the nearly $1.5 billion in damages he owes the Sandy Hook families who sued him for defamation.
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Pomp and circumstance again fall victim to circumstance for some students in the graduating class of 2024, as protests over the war in Gaza threaten to disrupt commencement ceremonies.
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The new rules also broaden the interpretation of Title IX to cover pregnant, gay and transgender students. They do not address whether schools can ban trans athletes from women's and girls' teams. -
New Englanders are expecting treacherous roads and power outages. Southern New England and the coastline will get mostly rain, and maybe a few inches of snow, with most snow further north. -
An American Library Association report says efforts to restrict books accelerated last year. The number of individual titles challenged in school and public libraries rose by 65% over the prior year.
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Overall, the number of individual titles challenged in both school and public libraries spiked by 65% — the highest level ever recorded by the ALA. -
Jack Texeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking secret U.S. military documents online, has pleaded guilty. Under the terms of a plea deal, he faces between 11 and 16 years in prison.
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Several other states have made moves to disassociate from the nation's oldest library professional association. But Georgia's bill, the first of its kind in the nation, goes further than the others. -
A judge ruled there's a viable argument that removing certain books is unconstitutional. Free speech advocates, a publisher, authors and parents say the restrictions violate the First Amendment.
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Claudine Gay, Harvard's first Black president, is stepping down after six months — amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over her congressional testimony about antisemitism.
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For 20 years, Sally Snowman has kept watch over Boston Light, which first illuminated Boston Harbor in 1716. She's the country's last Coast Guard lighthouse keeper and is retiring at the end of 2023.
