An Interview with Vern E. Smith, 30-Year Newsweek Veteran and Author of The Jones Men

About The Jones Men An all-out drug war explodes in 1970s Detroit when a young Vietnam veteran decides to rip off heroin kingpin Willis McDaniel. In the chaos, rival outfits, the Mafia, and even junkies themselves try to step in to fill the void while one lone assassin tries to hunt them all down—and one determined cop tries to stop it all.
Q. How did you come to write The Jones Men? A. The novel grew out of my work as a journalist. I was a bureau chief and national correspondent for Newsweek, and before that a newspaper reporter in California. I had just joined Newsweek as a correspondent in the Detroit bureau in 1972 when I began reporting a story for the magazine that turned into a piece called "Detroit's Heroin Subculture,” in which I first used the term “jones men” to describe the players in that world. After the piece ran, it caused quite a stir. I developed more sources, feeling there was a book in the material. One publisher was interested in a novel, which naturally appealed to me. Q. What was the initial reaction to the book? A. In a word, amazing. I remember sending in the first four chapters to my editor, and his saying "Keep going, keep going!" I finished the final chapter in a hotel room in Houston. I didn't take a leave from Newsweek to write the book (I had just gotten there), so I was traveling with the Atlanta Braves, reporting on Hank Aaron's chase of Babe Ruth's home run record when I finished it. The book was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America, and named a New York Times Notable Book.
Q. With such critical success, why didn't you write another novel? A. My calling was reporting, and it didn’t really change after the book. I came into journalism at a time when the country was in crisis, on the heels of a wave of urban riots, and major media being excoriated by a Presidential Commission for its failure to provide coverage on the causes and consequences of these civil disorders. So I came to see being a journalist as a way to have impact.
Q. How did this “40th Anniversary Edition” of The Jones Men come about? A. I met Bill Campbell of Rosarium Publishing through Ed Hall, a writer and editor who'd worked for me as a researcher when I was Atlanta bureau chief for Newsweek. They had just finished co-editing Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, a speculative fiction anthology, and I liked Bill's idea of bringing the book to a new generation of readers.
Q. Crime novelist, Gar Anthony Haywood, calls The Jones Men, “The Wire before there was The Wire.” Do you find that a fair comparison? A. I thank him for that because The Wire received a lot of acclaim. I hope a generation that grew up liking that will give The Jones Men a look. I think what Gar and others are referring to is the gritty realism and lack of sentimentality in the story. The other thing is the large, diverse cast of characters from all walks of life, and how they interact with each other in The Jones Men is still something that you rarely find in books and almost never found on television before The Wire. The dealers, the police, the big money men, and the junkies operate on a near-equal footing in the novel, which provides an air of uncertainty and suspense for the reader in the same way it did for viewers of The Wire.
Q. What are your plans for the future? Another novel, perhaps?
A. Yes, more novels, and also a narrative journalism collection of my non-Newsweek stories. I think of myself as a storyteller, so I’ve never stopped writing fiction even as I continued my journalism career. I feel like I've come full circle in my writing life, where I’m back where I began, having fun creating characters and seeing what happens next. I've also written a screenplay about Jake Gaither, the legendary football coach at Florida A&M University who had a lasting impact on the college and pro game we see today. It's called Agile Mobile Hostile, and is based on a book by journalist George Curry. And I’m writing and serving as one of the executive producers on a documentary film project with the Jus Blues Music Foundation called Bluesman from Natchez.

http://www.thehistorymakers.com/
About the Author (from http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/vernon-smith-41) Journalist and author Vern E. Smith was born Vernon Emile Smith on February 13, 1946, in Natchez, Mississippi, where he spent the majority of his youth. Smith attended San Francisco State University, where he was a member of the school’s Black Student Union and served as sports editor and columnist for the campus daily newspaper. Smith met his wife in 1967, graduated from San Francisco State University in 1969, and, soon after, attended the Summer Program for Minority Journalists at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In the summer of 1969, Smith joined the staff of the Independent, Press-Telegram in Long Beach, California. Smith joined Newsweek as a correspondent in 1971 after being recruited by John L. Dotson Jr., the magazine's then Los Angeles bureau chief, the first African American to hold that title. Smith was assigned to the Detroit bureau where he learned from veteran writers Jim Jones and Jon Lowell. Smith won the Detroit Press Club Foundation’s annual magazine writing award for a Newsweek article entitled “Detroit’s Heroin Subculture,” which informed his 1974 novel The Jones Men, recommended by the The New York Times and re-published by W.W. Norton in 1998. In 1973, Smith was transferred to Atlanta, where he covered Maynard Jackson’s campaign to become Atlanta’s first African American mayor and Hank Aaron’s ordeal as he broke Babe Ruth’s Major League Baseball home run record. While in the South, Smith wrote articles about several unsolved civil rights murders and covered the trials of the Klansmen convicted in the 1963 church bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four little girls. In 1979, Smith became Newsweek’s Atlanta Bureau chief. In 1980, Smith covered the Atlanta Child Murders. As a reporter for Newsweek’s Special Projects Unit, Smith contributed to four cover stories that were later published as books, including “Brothers,” the true story of fellow black journalist Sylvester Monroe’s roots in Chicago’s housing projects, and “Charlie Company,” which was awarded the 1981 National Magazine Award. Smith also wrote about George Corley Wallace, the family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young, Strom Thurmond, and the Little Rock Nine. After covering the 1996 Summer Olympic games in Atlanta, Smith was named a Newsweek National Correspondent in 1997. Smith wrote numerous articles for several publications including Ebony, Crisis, GEO, The Sunday Times of London, and TV Guide. Smith also contributed to My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience, published in May of 2004 as part of the Voices of Civil Rights Project. (source: http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/vernon-smith-41)