Former newspaper editor sentenced for paying girls to send him explicit videos

SPOKANE, Wash. — A former Washington state newspaper editor accused of paying girls for sexually explicit images has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Steven Smith, of Spokane, Washington, was sentenced on Wednesday, KREM-TV reported. He was arrested in July 2023 and charged with 11 counts of possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

“Though it seems wholly inadequate to say, I am ashamed and I am so sorry,” Smith said at sentencing in the Spokane County Courthouse.

Smith pleaded guilty in November to one count of exploitation of a minor and three counts of first-degree possession of child pornography as part of a plea agreement, KHQ-TV reported at the time.

Smith was executive editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane from 2002 to 2008. After leaving the newspaper, he taught journalism ethics at the University of Idaho, retiring in 2020.

Court documents say an account in Smith’s name for a mobile cash payment service was linked to an investigation into children using social media to send sexually explicit images of themselves in exchange for money sent to them via the app.

The victims, 10- to 14-year-old girls, sent images to an Instagram account and received money through a cash app account. Internet activity of those accounts was traced to Smith’s Spokane home, according to the documents. Detectives say the victims shared approximately 30 nude videos of themselves between April 2022 and January 2023.

Chat conversations showed Smith was aware of the victims’ ages, the documents said.

Smith was downloading more of the images when investigators searched his home, the documents said.