The National Association of Black Journalists at Syracuse University hosted Judy Smith on November 18, 2013. Judy Smith is a crisis management expert who worked on many famous, recent events. She worked behind the scenes of some of the greatest scandals of our time, including the Michael Vick dog fighting scandal and the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski scandal. Smith was born in Washington and had a normal family with two working-class parents. She majored in public relations in college and got a graduate degree in law. Smith also wrote a bestselling book entitled Good Self, Bad Self: Transforming Your Worst Qualities into Your Biggest Assets.
As an African American woman in journalism, Smith believes that people focus on a host of different things when they are hiring, including race and sex. However, she does not let this discourage her and chooses not to focus on those opinions of others. Smith said, “There is power in being yourself, and I think that sometimes we forget that. And I also think that there is power in working hard, doing hard work.” Smith takes great pride in her work and believes that perseverance can overcome obstacles. When choosing clients, Smith spends a lot of time looking at strategy, how likely it is that she can help the client, and how the client makes sense for her. Although she believes that she is not able to help everyone, she is big believer in forgiveness and second chances. She loves her job and loves helping people.
Smith’s life inspired the television show Scandal. She mentions that the show definitely dramatizes her life and adds aspects that are purely for entertainment, but she often gives advice to the character that plays her in the show in order to make the character an accurate reflection of her.
Usually when first addressing a client, Smith begins with the end in mind. Telling the truth to her clients is extremely important to her. She also believes that the true facts are extremely important and acknowledges that people look at the facts through a lens of how they want things to be. Smith believes that it is important to draw boundaries while managing personal and work life. Smith acknowledges that social media has changed the landscape of her career and is hard to monitor. Social media and fact-checking issues have made her job harder, and she has often advised clients to monitor what they post on social media.
As media professionals, Smith says we can learn to stick with our professions and narrow down our focus to focus on what we are good at in order to excel. She believes having some specialties is better than being a “jack of all trades.” She embraces the insanity and chaos of her normal life. Her entire career focuses on framing issues and telling stories in a different, more positive light. Smith truly is a professional storyteller.
The presentation opened with a video that explained the career or crisis management and showed some examples of Smith’s work. Throughout the presentations, Smith took questions from Twitter. Even in the presentation itself, multimedia was extremely present and made the discussion interactive and interesting. Smith used a variety of media tactics to tell her story, and uses those same media tactics in her career on a daily basis.