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.
-
When Jeremy Richman and Jennifer Hensel lost their daughter in the Connecticut shooting, they couldn't understand why someone would do such a thing. In seeking an answer, they're funding research into the forces that increase a person's risk of aggression — and have also found a path to healing. -
It's the moment many victims of former Boston mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger have been waiting decades for: In federal court in Boston on Wednesday, relatives of those killed by Bulger will face the former gangster and describe their pain. -
Good Samaritans are celebrated in the press for doing the right thing all the time, but does all that attention lower expectations for everyday behavior?
-
Every victim who arrived at a hospital alive survived the attack. But hospitals say the experience also revealed room for improvement, and they're about to share the lessons they learned at a national conference in Washington, D.C. -
This year has been anything but routine in Boston, after the deadly marathon bombings and the chaotic manhunt. But tonight, the traditional July Fourth show will go on as the Boston Pops performs amid bursts of fireworks. While the music and pyrotechnics will be familiar, the scene and mood are different. -
Businessman and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez is trying to pull off a win in Tuesday's special election to fill John Kerry's Senate seat — like Republican Scott Brown's surprising special election victory in 2010. But polls show Gomez trailing veteran Democratic Rep. Ed Markey. -
A federal ruling against a major movie studio's use of unpaid interns could have a wide impact on uncompensated labor, including internships for college credit. Workers' advocates say many interns are preventing workers who can't afford to work free from entering the labor force. -
Veteran Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, who has been in office for 36 years, will face off against novice Republican Gabriel Gomez in the race to become the next U.S. senator from Massachusetts. -
Maggie Gallagher is one of the nation's most public opponents of gay marriage. These days, she's thinking more about how to continue advocating for marriage between one man and one woman, even as society's views — and laws — are shifting rapidly. -
Lawyers, prosecutors and judges across Massachusetts are sorting through thousands of cases that may now unravel. With a former chemist accused of falsifying as many as 34,000 test results, hundreds of former defendants have already been released and police are bracing for an uptick in crime.
