Shepard Smith and the Presidential Debate…

The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough has an interview with FNC’s Shepard Smith prior to Friday’s presidential debate.

Not only did the Fox News Channel anchor grow up about 40 miles north in Holly Springs, Miss., but his family lives in and around Oxford and within the past year bought a house in Oxford.

“I live less than a mile from the place where we’ll be doing the debate,” Smith said earlier this week. That is, of course, whether the debate will be held. As of Thursday, it wasn’t clear on whether it would go on as scheduled.

All those Mississippi connections give Smith an advantage in everything from knowing all the best places to go in and around Oxford — he’s been advising friends inside and outside Fox informally — as well as realizing the importance that the national attention that the state will receive on its image. Smith said that it’s a new area long removed from the stain of segregation that made headlines in the 1960s.

“There have never been this many journalists in the state of Mississippi, ever. Why would there be 3,000 journalists in Mississippi?” Smith said this week in an interview in his New York office. “There weren’t that many journalists for Hurricane Katrina and the entering of James Meredith combined.” Meredith was the first black student at the University of Mississippi, whose entrance to Ole Miss was opposed by the state’s governor and required President Kennedy to send troops in to secure.

As does the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal’s Mike Tonos….

Smith plans to be in Oxford for the big event, even if rains predicted along the East Coast today shut down airports. “Come hell or high water,” he said, “if there’s a debate, I’ll be in Oxford.”

Smith, who has anchored “The Fox Report” on Fox News for the past nine years, got his start in journalism at Ole Miss. He recently bought a house in Oxford and tries to fly in for home football games. He said he hopes to bring Oxford and Ole Miss to his audience in a way unlike any other journalist there.

“Nobody believes in Oxford more than I do. That’s sort of my message,” he said.

Besides anchoring his 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. shows, he’ll also host his 4 p.m. radio show and work on The Strategy Room, which is based on the Web. And he’s got to cover the debate, too.

“I’ve got to work. I won’t be having any fun on Friday. I mean, work is fun, but I won’t be having any Oxford fun,” he said.

Smith has been too busy covering the country’s financial crisis to come to Oxford early to film features about the town and university, as he’d planned to do.

“I haven’t been able to do that sort of preparation, but we’re reading and studying and talking to these candidates every day,” Smith said.