The Al Smith Awards Dinner

The Al Smith Award honors public service through community journalism by Kentuckians. Smith was the first recipient of the award.

This annual event is designed to honor its namesake: Albert P. Smith Jr., who owned weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee, was founding host of KET’s “Comment on Kentucky” and main founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

Al Smith’s powerful story

In the spirit of its namesake, the dinner event was created in 2011 to honor good journalism for rural Kentucky communities. The celebration has grown to include the Tom and Pat Gish Award, recognizing student scholarship contributions and a keynote speaker.

Al Smith Awards Dinner 2025 video 

In 2025, Dee Davis regaled the dinner crowd with tales of his rural upbringing, which included an exceptional career in newspaper delivery. Davis described how he spent hours perfecting the art of landing newspapers on front porches in one deft swing. He also shared some mischievous doings in some of his newspaper customers' front yards that got him into a bit of trouble. 

Davis told the crowd that when he looked back at the trouble his antics had gotten him into and the people who helped him set things right, he began to see how just about anyone might need a second chance. Davis said he still believed that rural communities were tight-knit places where offering second chances was woven into the fabric of everyday life. 

Davis founded the Center for Rural Strategies and is the publisher of the Daily Yonder, a rural news platform that launched in 2007. He lives in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

The Al Smith Awards Dinner is co-sponsored by the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky and the Bluegrass Chapter (KY) of the Society of Professional Journalists.