News Herald publisher announces retirement

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Lamar Smitherman announced his retirement as Publisher of the Morganton News Herald and the Marion McDowell News on Tuesday. Smitherman, who will step down from his role on March 30, has been in charge of the properties for the past eight years.

Smitherman’s newspaper career spans more than 40 years. He got his start in the business soon after graduating college in 1972. He has had hands-on experience in all aspects of the business beginning as a sales rep and working his way up to publisher with a Multimedia paper in Prattville, Alabama, before accepting a partnership in an independent paper in Mississippi. He returned to Prattville in 1989 and opened The Autauga Times, which he later sold to Multimedia, and he once again became publisher of The Prattville Progress, a subsidiary of the Montgomery Advertiser. While in that capacity, he also was responsible for producing The Redstone Rocket in Huntsville, Alabama, the Fort Benning Bayonet in Columbus, Georgia, and the Maxwell Gunter Dispatch in Montgomery, Alabama for The Advertiser Company.

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