Russ Smith's College Days

february 14, 2003  08:39 am
Johns Hopkins Magazine says Smith led a university newspaper staff "fueled by coffee, beer, and drugs." Several former fellow underclassmen express shock that the devotee of Hunter Thompson has morphed into an acerbic conservative columnist. The alumni magazine calls the The New York Press, which Smith founded in 1988, "a gadfly: loud, vulgar, self-indulgent, disrespectful, and bracing." Smith's "Mugger" column "can veer from political diatribe to vitriolic media critique to accounts of Smith's domestic life, all in one week," Dale Keiger writes. Smith recently sold the paper and has plans to move from New York City to Baltimore.