Smith won the 2022 NPF Feddie Award for outstanding reporting about the impact of federal laws and regulations on local communities.

Orion Donovan Smith covers the federal government’s impact on the Inland Northwest, reporting from DC for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, WA. He grew up outside Concrete, WA, before attending Sedro-Woolley High School and the University of Washington in Seattle. As a graduate student at American University, Smith wrote about immigration policy and goat yoga for The Washington Post, produced shows for the WAMU/NPR program 1A and worked as an Investigative Reporting Workshop fellow on the PBS Frontline documentary Plastic Wars. He’s a Regional Reporters Association board member and a Report for America corps member.