Telling
it like it is. . .
For over 40 years
the Review has been a consistent critic of the Reaganesque economy
that led to the 2008 financial collapse.
We reported on NSA
monitoring of U.S. phone calls in 1998, years before it became
a major media story.
In 2003 Sam Smith
wrote an article for Harper's comprised entirely of falsehoods
about Iraq by Bush administration officials.
The Review started
a web edition in 1995 when there were only 20,000 web sites worldwide.
Today there are about 70 million active sites. The Review ranks
in the top three percent of all American sites. It began an e-mail
edition in 1994.
The Review became
the first publication to report in depth on what would become
known as the Clinton scandals. Before Clinton's nomination, we
listed more than a score of institutions and individuals - nearly
all of whom would be linked to criminal misdoing before the end
of the Clinton administration
Our 1990 article
on the savings & loan bailout scandal was selected by Utne
Reader as one of the ten most under-covered stories of the past
decade.
In the 1980s, Thomas
S Martin predicted in the Review that "Yugoslavia will eventually
break up" and that "a challenge to the centralized
soviet state" would occur as a result of devolutionary trends.
Both happened.
In the 1980s, we
reported on the dangers of computerized voting and suggests possible
solutions including an independent review of software and an
adequate audit trail.
Beginning in the
1970s, we argued that the war on drugs was wrong and would not
work. It hasn't.
We argued for light
rail and other transit alternatives in the 1970s that were later
widely adopted.
In the 1970s we
published a first person account of a then illegal abortion
In 1966 we published
two articles on auto safety by Ralph Nader
Our arguments for
DC statehood in 1970 led to the creation of the DC Statehood
Party, now the DC Statehood Greens.
In 1965 we called
for the end of the draft.
We proposed bikeways
in the 1960s.
We proposed community
policing in the 1960s
We opposed and helped
stop the planned freeway system that would have made DC like
an east coast Los Angeles.
We published first
person reports from the Mississippi pivotal civil rights summer
of 1964.
For many years we
provided alternative coverage of the arts, with writers such
as Tom Shales (now with the Washington Post and a nationally
syndicated TV critic) and Patricia Griffith, later president
of the Pen/Faulkner Foundation, was also among the paper's arts
critics.
Our arts section later became the Washington Review of the Arts
that lasted for 25 years and won numerous awards.
We featured the
work of photo editor Roland Freeman, the first photographer to
win a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Freeman
would become a leading photographer of the civil rights movement.
We long published
the only urban planning comic strip in America, drawn by DC architect
John Wiebenson.
Until its author was released from prison, we published what
was then the only column written from behind bars for a non-prison
publication.
In November 1990
we devoted an entire issue to the ecologically-sound city and
how to develop it. The article was republished widely -- from
Utne Reader to the Atlanta Constitution and the San Francisco
Examiner.
Over the years many
interesting writers and cartoonists have graced our pages. Among
them: Eugene McCarthy; We have also featured the work of such
alternative cartoonists as Ron Cobb, Tony Auth, Tom Tomorrow
and Bill Griffith and the columnist Dave Barry long before they
were picked up in the journalistic mainstream.
What
others say. . .
An alternative press icon if ever
there was one -- NY Press
A truly independent journalist with
his feet firmly grounded in the city of neighborhoods and everyday
people. - Patrick Mazza, Progressive Populist
-- A larger than life presence in
the nation's capital . . .A truly original voice in American
journalism: humorous and plain spoken and filled with common
sense -- Jay Waljasper, Utne Reader
Inimitable -- Mother Jones Magazine
Sam's a cynical cat -- Marion
Barry
The Progressive Review has been
a luxuriant jungle of old-school reporting and frenetic information
exchange since before blogs were blogs, and before the Internet
was the Internet. - Jason Zannon, Democracy in Action
Sam Smith has been a lonely populist
voice in Washington, a journalist who's chronicled the waste,
the misdeeds, the scandals, and spending that make Washington
Washington. Smith is a natural-born iconoclast who refuses to
give up being a barnstormer - Jacki Lyden, NPR
One of the nation's leading visionaries.
-- Charlie Spencer, Charlie Spencer Show
Notorious journalist -- Seattle
Weekly
Washington has but a very few observers
of the caliber, honesty and overall orneriness at the right times
and places as Sam Smith -- Stephen Goode, Insight Magazine
Sam's one of the few independent
voices left. -- Eugene McCarthy,
He has a wonderful combination of
being absolutely realistic about the vagaries of people in political
life while still being an idealist. -- Peter Edelman
A reputation for wit, intelligence
and anger. -- Claude Lewis, Chicago Tribune
Smith is an island of reason and
information in a sea of narcissistic blather. -- City Paper,
Washington
Sam Smith is an antidote to mindless
speed reading. He makes you pause between paragraphs in order
to mull over the captivating morsels he is placing in your imagination.
- Ralph Nader
There are butts that need kicking
in this country . . . Sam Smith is handing out the boots. --
Alex Steffen, The Stranger, Seattle
Smith offers [a] community based,
participatory politics that's neither left nor right wing but
the whole bird. . . . His work is not different from what quality
journalism ought to be: truth-seeking, independent, fair-minded
and debunking. -- Colman McCarthy, Washington Post
His saucy judgments remind one of
the way H. L. Mencken handled presidential campaigns." --
Robert Sherrill, The Texas Observer.
The Tom Paine of the Nineties --
Chuck Stone
Lucid . . . Keep going, Sam -- Mario
Cuomo
The Review:
The moderate voice of a time that has not yet come. |