Doug Smock
Doug Smock is a retired newspaper reporter and magazine editor who lives in North Weymouth, Massachusetts. He was born in 1948 in Bethel Park, Pa., and graduated from Churchill Area High School in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. He was chief editor of the Reserve Tribune and one of the founders of The Observer student newspaper at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from CWRU with a degree in economics after participating in the Washington Semester honors program at American University in Washington, D.C.
His journalism career began in 1970 as a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he covered the steel industry and several cityside beats. In 1978, he became News Editor at Purchasing Magazine and then Chief Editor at Plastics World, both published by Reed-Elsevier in Boston. He co-wrote two books on supply chain management published by J.D. Ross: Straight to the Bottom Line and On-Demand Supply Management. Straight to the Bottom Line was published in several languages and was considered the leading publication on corporate purchasing for several years. Smock was also Associate Publisher and Editorial Director of a McGraw-Hill launch titled Modern Mold & Tooling, which included the most successful trade show introduction in McGraw-Hill history.
After retiring, he toured battlefields with his brother Bob and began writing stories that evolved into Forgotten Battles and American Memory. He began self-publishing books with his own imprint, Wessagussett Press, in 2019. Smock and Janet Poole cofounded a $100,000+ student journalism fund in 2025 to spur in-depth reporting and development of innovative approaches at The Observer in memory of Jonathan Poole, also one of the founders of the paper. “No matter what career student journalists pursue, training in research and clear writing are skills that will prove valuable their entire lives,” Smock said in the CWRU announcement of the program.
