Jim Amidon — Remember Ryan Smith ’03 — a tall, skinny drink of water who majored in poli-sci and wrote for The Bachelor? The guy has an uncanny knack for landing in the right places at the right time. (And I’m sure hard work has a lot to do with it.)
When he did a White House summer internship, he was one of the very few interns who got to work in the West Wing.
When he said he wanted to go to journalism school, I thought, "no way." He got into Columbia and finished his master’s degree right on time.
On election night 2004, he spent the evening as the youngest person in the control room of CBS’s news division watching the results come in.
He wrote me Friday saying to tune in to 48 Hours, the CBS news program that covers a single story for a full hour. Why? Saturday’s program, "Strange Truth: A Murder Mystery," was pitched to producers by our very own Ryan Smith.
Officially, he’s in research and story development, which means "I do front-end work for stories—I find and research stories; pitch them; travel to meet people involved; and convince them to come on television. It’s a great job, especially for someone my age who can still live out of a suitcase."
Smith began with 48 Hours in February; it’s taken the better part of six months to get his story on the air. Smith is pleased, though; he has three other stories in production.
Contact Ryan Smith at: smithr@cbsnews.com
