Copyright (c) 2007 Greensboro News & Record

So, what's new? Ask Smitty

Date: July 17, 2007 Edition(s): Greensboro Edtion Variation Page: B1
Section: Triad Column: Jeri Rowe    
Source:    Jeri Rowe Dateline: WINSTON-SALEM


WINSTON-SALEM - Hang with Jeff Smith for a night, an hour, even a minute, and you'll hear the schoolyard shouts when someone spots the ball cap. "Smitty! What's up? How you been?''

By day, Jeff is a litigation paralegal . But by night, he dons his khaki-colored ball cap, grabs his cane and transforms into Smitty, Winston-Salem's unofficial social guru with a gap-toothed grin known by, well, everybody.

He traipses around his hometown looking for news. Whatever he finds, he includes it on his Web site and delivers every two weeks in a newsletter that reaches more than 10,000 subscribers .

He's been doing it for a decade. On the Internet. The town square for the 21st century.

Now, let me come clean. For three years, from 2001 to 2003, I was Jeff's editor. He wrote a weekly column for TriadStyle, the region's old alt-weekly, and for a brief time with Go Triad.

But Jeff was more than a columnist. He was the go-to guy, Winston-Salem's prime Urban Pioneer, who helped others - particularly young guns in their 20s and 30s - connect with city officials, civic leaders and business executives.

He helped pull together a once disconnected cultural scene and helped North Carolina's City of the Arts live up to its name by turning his perch into a bully pulpit for some underdog cause.

He's worked his brand of social capital primarily through his Web site and his Evenings With Eight, a dinner-and-speaker gig he started in January 2001 . So far, nearly 1,000 people have attended. Other Web-savvy folks have replicated his work in Greensboro and elsewhere.

And he's done it in a corner of the South where race often separates white from black in neighborhoods, churches, schools and community events. That didn't happen in Jeff's case.

"Oh, Smitty is a black guy?'' people would ask.

It was no big deal. And that's a refreshing change for a region that's rarely colorblind.

Jeff followed the advice he heard via e-mail seven years ago from Craig Newmark , the founder of Craig's List, the popular online community forum: "Keep it real. Keep it about community. Don't let money drive your decisions.''

"This is not rocket science,'' Jeff told me the other night in a downtown restaurant, holding court as Winston-Salem started to unwind. "A simple idea of e-mailing my friends has turned into this. It's given people a different view of Winston-Salem. That's the joy of it.''

Jeff loves his hometown and, simply put, he was tired of watching it die.

As the influence of banking and tobacco continued to wane, Jeff watched his friends flee the Triad, attracted by the bright lights and big opportunities of some bigger city.

So, in April 1997 , he started e-mailing a list of local events among a dozen or so friends because they were all twenty- and thirty-somethings looking for something to do.

His e-mail got forwarded to other people. Then, to other people. Then, back to him. That's how it started, this something he first called Smitty's Community Notes.

Jeff is now 43. He still goes out three nights a week . But he's starting to slow down. He has a degenerative nerve disorder that causes him to walk with a cane and a brace on his left leg. He receives a blood plasma infusion every other Friday .

The grind of Smitty's Notes is tough. You see, Smitty simply steals Jeff's time and wants more, more, more. So he's evaluating the future of the online community forum he created to see where it could go next.

Still, on a recent Thursday night, Jeff couldn't help but gush. He looked down Trade Street, and even before the schoolyard shouts came, he flashed his gap-toothed grin and talked about what has been.

"I've seen a world of change on this block,'' he said. "It's really come alive, and now I want to step back and enjoy it, you know?''

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jrowe@news-record.com. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be sold, published or included in any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher.