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Your connection to industry & member news | June 12, 2025
Editor's Note: There will not be an eBulletin next week. We'll be back on June 26.
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Next Friday is final day to RSVP for June 26 federal court, PACER training Next Friday, June 20, is the last day to register for SCPA's free webinar on covering federal courts and using PACER.
We are partnering with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina to host this free virtual crash course, which will be held on June 26 from 2-3:30 p.m.
Join us for an overview of the work of the U.S. Attorney’s office, federal investigations, the court system and PACER.
While all SCPA members are welcome to attend, this is a great training session for journalists who have not covered federal court cases or are curious about federal investigations.
The session will be presented by Veronica Hill, left, public affairs specialist for the U. S. Attorney’s Office in the District of South Carolina. Let us know if you can make it!
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'Mountains of paperwork' exist after ICE arrested 80 at Ladson club. The public 'won't get it.'
LADSON — Nearly a week after federal, state and local law enforcement hauled off 80 people from a 24-hour nightclub in a large-scale sting, few records associated with the operation have been made public.
Most of those documents never will be, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) public affairs officer, Lindsay Williams.
“There’s mountains of paperwork,” Williams said. "You won't get it."
The majority of people rounded up around 3 a.m. on June 1 were detained for civil issues with their immigration status. But the bust also yielded a handful of criminal arrests, including at least two people accused of being "high-level" cartel members and one person allegedly wanted for an international murder.
Law enforcement has been tight-lipped about releasing the names of those arrested. And the public knows next to nothing about the people who were whisked away to an ICE holding facility in rural Georgia.
By Kailey Cota and Komlavi Adissem, The Post and Courier | Read more
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FOIA suit filed against town of Central
CENTRAL — Another Golden Corner municipality is facing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Pickens County resident Jack Queener filed a lawsuit against the town of Central on Friday claiming the town committed multiple FOIA violations.
According to the lawsuit, the town held executive sessions on June 10, 2024; July 8, 2024; Aug. 12, 2024; Jan. 13, 2025; Feb. 10, 2025 and March 10, 2025 without announcing a specific purpose.
In addition, following the Feb. 10 executive session, “Mayor (Andrew Beckner) moved to authorize the Town Administration to explore the framework of a tax increment financing program,” according to court documents. “Upon information and belief, this was the subject of the executive session which is not a reason to go into executive session under § 30-4-70(a).”
Another complaint listed was the “illegal” hiring of town planning consultant Michael Foreman.
“Upon information and belief, the council entered into a contract with the consultant without public notice or a public vote,” the lawsuit said. “Councilwoman Bowers awarded the contract to the independent consultant after getting ‘approval’ from three other council members, including (the) Mayor, via a telephone call. This illegal meeting did not follow § 30-4-70(a) procedures for holding an executive session and was an attempt to circumvent FOIA requirements in violation of § 30-4-70(c). The appropriation of funding via this contract is without authorization and violates FOIA requirements.”
By Evan Smoak, The (Seneca) Journal | Read more
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Editorial: Get a load of Clemson's latest excuse for hiding information from the public
We know all about Dabo Swinney’s lucrative contract: how many millions Clemson’s superstar football coach makes every year, how much he’d have to pay Clemson if he left (it’s more if he were to go to Alabama), how much the university would have to pay to dump him, and what sort of actions would allow the school to fire him without a payout.
We know all this because Clemson is a public university, so how it spends money is the public’s business. And yes, that includes so-called “athletic department money,” because as the S.C. Supreme Court has made clear, once money enters a public institution, it becomes public money — even if that money comes from TV rights or admission tickets to football games.
But when The Post and Courier’s Jon Blau asked Clemson for copies of the revenue-sharing contracts it signed with student-athletes in preparation for NCAA's antitrust lawsuit that a federal judge approved on Friday, the school said no.
Back in January, it claimed these agreements were educational records exempt from disclosure under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Apparently, even Clemson officials realized it was laughable to claim that how many millions of dollars an athlete gets paid in return for affiliating with one of our public institutions is a student record. So when Mr. Blau asked again this spring, the university came up with another ridiculous answer: The contracts, it said, are "proprietary" information, whose release legal counsel argues would put Clemson at a "competitive disadvantage."
From The Post and Courier | Read more
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$825K in debt with no votes: Calhoun Falls lease deals under scrutiny
Lease agreements signed last March by Calhoun Falls Mayor Terrico Holland, Town Clerk Wendi Lewis and council members have raised serious questions about legality and transparency for the town of Calhoun Falls.
A copy of the documents obtained by the Index-Journal from state Rep. Craig Gagnon, shows the Town of Calhoun Falls entered into a $690,000 municipal lease-purchase agreement, including $400,000 in principal and $290,000 in interest (an APR of 11.81%), with First Government Lease Co. in March, 2024. The deal commits the town to 40 quarterly payments of $17,250. The lease lists multiple vehicles and town-owned properties as collateral.
Just eight months earlier, the town signed a separate lease-purchase agreement with the same company for $135,810.40 to finance three vehicles. That contract includes $35,425.40 in interest (an APR of 12.32%) on a principal of $100,385, to be repaid over five years through 20 quarterly payments of $6,790.52.
Both deals were signed by Mayor Holland and Town Clerk Wendi (Alewine) Lewis. Two council member signatures, Sam Hill and Wane Postell, appear on the $690,000 lease agreement.
Gagnon said in an email that the agreements were “all done without public notice and a resolution by the Town Council as required by ordinance and, I believe, state statute.”
By Renee Ortiz, Index-Journal | Read more
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Column: SC regulators' actions 'anathema to concept of due process,' and they're not alone
Whenever I start thinking I’m a bit clever, I run headfirst into another one of those examples of the lengths to which state and local government agencies will go to defy state law and hide public information from the public — examples that make me concede that I’m just not creative enough to make up the kind of outrageous maneuvers bureaucrats produce.
The latest example comes courtesy of the new S.C. Department of Environmental Services, by way of S.C. Circuit Judge Frank Addy.
You already know part of this story: Because of the tremendous damage septic tanks do when they inevitably leak — and particularly because of the danger in South Carolina's high-water-table, low-elevation coastal zone — the S.C. Environmental Law Project filed suit on behalf of the Charleston Waterkeeper and the Coastal Conservation League in 2023 to force what was then DHEC to treat applications for septic-tank subdivisions like the coordinated systems they are, rather than a bunch of individual applications that have no cumulative effect on neighbors or the environment. As The Post and Courier’s Toby Cox reports, the judge declined, but he ordered the agency to let the public know when anyone in the coastal zone applies for a septic tank permit.
What you almost certainly don’t know is why a judge needed to order the agency to make public information public: that is, the extraordinary lengths to which the agency has been going to see to it that the public doesn’t know what it’s doing, despite a law that clearly says it’s supposed to inform us.
By Cindi Ross Scoppe, The Post and Courier | Read more
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SC's Monkey Island poses 'potentially life-threatening situations,' documents reveal
A remote South Carolina island that is home to as many as 3,500 research monkeys poses so many “potentially life-threatening situations” that caretakers must bar the public and prosecute trespassers, according to federal contract documents reviewed by The Post and Courier.
The contract paints a far more alarming picture of security risks and health dangers on so-called “Monkey Island” than government officials and contractor Alpha Genesis have acknowledged. Alpha Genesis, which took over the colony’s management in 2023, recently received another $4.1 million from the National Institutes of Health to run the project for another year.
The 88-page contract requires 24/7 staffing at the island and demands that all employees be trained in the “sensitive nature” of the work and proper animal care.
By Marilyn W. Thompson, The Post and Courier | Read more
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Appeals court hands AP an incremental loss in its attempt to regain its access to Trump events
Digging deep into free-speech precedents in recent American history, a federal appeals panel handed The Associated Press an incremental loss on Friday in its continuing battle with the Trump administration over access by its journalists to cover presidential events.
By a 2-1 margin, judges on the three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington granted Trump a stay in enforcement of a lower-court ruling that the administration had improperly punished the AP for the content of its speech — in this case not renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Trump’s liking.
The news outlet’s access to events in the Oval Office and Air Force One was cut back starting in February after the AP said it would continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its copy, while noting Trump’s wishes that it instead be renamed the Gulf of America.
By David Bauder, Associated Press | Read more
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If you need K-12 education data, these 10 data tools from nonprofit research organizations can help
Use these free tools to examine data on student achievement, school segregation, dual enrollment programs and other education topics. Most generate maps, charts and lists that journalists can incorporate into their news coverage.
By Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource | Read more
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Google’s AI search features are killing traffic to publishers
Google’s AI Overviews and other AI-powered tools, including chatbots, are devastating traffic for news publishers, per a Wall Street Journal report.
Now that people can simply ask a chatbot for answers — sometimes generated from news content taken without a publisher’s knowledge — there’s no need to click on Google’s blue links. That means referrals to news sites are plummeting, cutting off the traffic publishers need to sustain quality journalism.
Google released AI Overviews, its search result summary tool, last year. Its rollout hit traffic to sites like vacation guides, health tips, and product reviews, per the Journal. AI Mode, Google’s ChatGPT competitor, is expected to hit traffic harder. It responds in a conversational tone with fewer external links.
For The New York Times, the share of traffic from organic search to the paper’s desktop and mobile sites fell to 36.5% in April 2025, down from 44% three years earlier, according to data from Similarweb cited in The Wall Street Journal report.
Google likes to tell a different story. During Google’s developer conference in May, the company said its AI Overviews feature has boosted search traffic — though maybe not for publishers.
Publishers like The Atlantic and The Washington Post have spoken about the need for the industry to shift business models, and fast, to combat this threat to journalism. Some have resorted to doing content-sharing deals with AI companies for additional revenue streams.
By Rebecca Bellan, TechCrunch | Read more
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|  If you ever need a space to host a staff retreat or event in Columbia, make sure to reach out to SCPA to check on availability. There is no charge for SCPA members to use our training room. Here are more details.
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By Joe Wedra,
My Horry News
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| In a world of artificial intelligence, storytelling still matters
For me, it’s not just about the writing.
As a journalist, my favorite part about producing and publishing stories isn’t the process of actually writing the story. In fact — and, I probably shouldn’t let my editor hear this — but sometimes, I don’t really feel like writing.
The act of tapping my keyboard, putting commas where they are supposed to be and remembering the specific AP-style rule for how to type out a specific title or date on the calendar isn’t all that fun.
But, the tedious process of actually writing is more than worth it when it comes to what this job really comes down to: relationship-building and telling important, meaningful stories.
In the midst of the artificial intelligence boom, there’s a question that has been popping up quite a bit in conversations lately. The remarks generally go something like this…
“Oh, AI is going to steal your job, huh?”
Or this:
“What’s it like knowing you’re going to be replaced by ChatGPT?”
Or my favorite:
“Have you thought about your career backup plans?" Read more
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By John Foust, Advertising Trainer
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| The persuasive power of proof
Even though the majority of us in the advertising business have never practiced law, we should instinctively know the importance of evidence.
Imagine a courtroom scene in which the prosecuting attorney points to the defendant and says, “Your honor, this person is guilty.” The judge asks, “What evidence do you have?” The prosecuting attorney shrugs and says, “There’s no need for evidence. They just are. They’re as guilty as anybody I’ve ever seen.”
Ridiculous, isn’t it? But isn’t that what some advertisers ask of their readers – to accept their claims without any supporting evidence? Just because an advertiser says a product is good doesn’t mean that consumers will automatically accept that as truth.
Advertisers – like attorneys – have to prove what they say. Many years ago I developed this simple PROOF acronym to help advertising folks remember five types of evidence. Although this memory tool doesn’t include every type of evidence, it’s designed to cover enough types to give us a good start when we’re working with advertisers. Read more
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