Michael Ray Smith

Writer. Professor. Speaker. Michael Ray Smith leads the digital story telling program at Campbell University. In 2012 his peers at Campbell University presented him with the Faculty Award for Commitment to Teaching, the first time the award has been given. In 2011 World Journalism Institute, Manhattan, named him the John McCandlish Phillips Scholar for 2011. Philips was the internationally-known reporter for The New York Times in the 1960s. The New Yorker has called McCandlish Phillips as "more interested in the truth and texture of a story than in scoring a scoop." Smith earned a Ph.D. from Regent University and taught at state and private universities, at graduate and undergraduate schools and is a professor of communication studies at Campbell University. An award-winning journalist and photographer, he has been quoted in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, The Arizona Republic, The Christian Science Monitor, The Louisville Courier-Journal, Editor & Publisher, Christianity Today, Writer’s Digest and many other periodicals. He has been a guest on radio and TV including French TV 24, a Paris-based television broadcast, and online sites such as Ourblook.com. He has written five books, 12 journal articles and hundreds of articles for the popular press. His work explores media bias, FeatureWriting.Net explores popular writing and The Jesus Newspaper explores the idea of the Christian journalist. His A Free Press in Freehand: The Spirit of American Blogging in the Handwritten Newspapers of John McLean Harrington 1858-1869 was released in 2011. Michael spent a decade working in the newsroom and more than two decades working in the classroom. In 2008 Shippensburg University, his graduate school, honored him as a Distinguished Alumnus of the Year, the highest award presented by the university. That same year Prince George’s Community College in suburban Washington, D.C., recognized him as one of its top 50 graduates. He has presented workshops on writing in the United States and overseas including a weeklong seminar on magazine writing for Magazine Training International. He works with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication on issues of equity and disability