Globe Health Reporter Stephen Smith To Become City Editor

The widely beloved and immensely talented (objective, moi?) Steve Smith, who has covered health issues ranging from AIDS to swine flu to cholera in Haiti for the Globe since 2002, is laying down his pad and pen to become the paper's new city editor.

Normally, these moving-on staff memos tend to strike me as damning with faint praise, but not this one. Globe Metro editor Jen Peter begins:

I'm thrilled to announce that Stephen Smith, a superb journalist and even
finer human being, will be joining the desk to help lead our local news
coverage as the Globe's new city editor. He brings to this role more than
30 years in the business (he began delivering a suburban paper near his
hometown of Louisville at age 11), an exemplary reputation as a health
reporter at the Globe and the Miami Herald, an insatiable drive to tell
important human stories, a stickler's attention to fairness and accuracy,
the most expansive vocabulary in the room, and a cooperative spirit that
will serve his editing and reporting colleagues well.