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Your connection to industry & member news | March 26, 2026
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Editorial: Keep details of USC, Clemson player contracts public even if names are hiddenEditor's note: Yesterday the House voted to override Gov. McMaster's veto by a vote of 88-22. The Senate has not yet taken up the veto.
S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster spent weeks channeling Hamlet (to veto or not to veto), but in the end he demonstrated some of his longest-held and most admirable values, vetoing a bill that would have hidden public information from the public about our colleges’ payments to star athletes.
The Legislature needs to sustain that veto and get to work on a better bill that creates a narrow exemption that follows the governor’s suggestions but expands on them to include an even more important principle that he didn’t.
H.4902 would blow a massive loophole through South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, not just by allowing but by actually requiring USC, Clemson and our other government-owned colleges to hide every speck of information in deals they sign with star players. Each college can pay more than $20 million total in what are called “revenue-sharing contracts” and what the colleges call, in order to confuse us, “name, image and likeness contracts.”
...And as media attorney Jay Bender noted in a guest column, the world of college athletics is not going to decide how much of its revenue-sharing funds to allocate on football, how much basketball and so on based on what USC and Clemson spend.
From The Post and Courier | Read more
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Free newspaper racks to a good home The Community Journals Media Group in Greenville has roughly 20 newspaper racks of varying types they no longer need.
Most are black plastic with a single door. They also have a handful of wire racks.
There is no cost but fellow members will have to pick them up and transport them.
If you are interested, please email Ryan or Sherry at Community Journals.
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| | Thanks 2026 Annual Meeting sponsors!
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Column: FOIA helps media, the public hold officials accountable
Freedom of the press.
It’s one of the fundamental rights put forth by the U.S. Constitution. Heck, it’s in the First Amendment.
Here’s what it says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
It’s great to live in a country where you can express your opinion without fear of punishment. There are some limits, of course.
But members of the press in the U.S. can express their opinions freely. We have a lot of tools at our disposal, and as Sunshine Week (where we celebrate transparency and open government) comes to a close it’s a good time to discuss.
Public records are paramount to much of what we do. It can help inform citizens of how their tax dollars are being spent, or it could be incident reports and arrest records of people charged with committing crimes.
South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, approved by the General Assembly in the early 1970s, makes records and meetings of public bodies open and available to both the press AND citizens. According to the S.C. Press Association, “this openness is important because it allows the public to learn about the performance of public officials and the expenditure of public funds.”
By John Boyette, Aiken Standard | Read more
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Commentary: Bring back town hall meetings: Transparency requires answering questions in person
Let me tell you about Jack Fields, a rock-ribbed conservative congressman I knew back in Texas more than three decades ago.
Fields was so well known for hosting constituent gatherings in rural areas and small towns like Tomball, Texas, that his district sometimes seemed to operate as a continuous public forum.
Voters could ask Fields any question in public, and he would answer — sometimes patiently, sometimes uncomfortably, but always directly, neither evading nor spinning.
And he would listen to us — and consider what we had to say.
As a college student, I rarely agreed with Fields, who served eight terms (1981 to 1997), but I appreciated his willingness to hold a few dozen open town hall meetings every year where anyone could challenge him directly about his votes.
What brings Fields to mind is the recent Sunshine Week, an annual celebration in March of openness in government. It’s usually associated with access to public records and open meetings.
But transparency is about more than documents on a website.
By Paul Hyde, S.C. Daily Gazette | Read more
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Plaintiffs reject Clemson settlement offer
CLEMSON — Plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) violations by the city of Clemson have rejected the city’s latest settlement proposal due to unmet requests and excluded sections.
Residents Eleanor O’Meara Hare and Holly Hewitt Ulbrich filed a lawsuit against the city in 2024 alleging the city violated its FOIA policy during proceedings about Hub Clemson, a student housing development on Keowee Trail.
The allegations include some members of Clemson City Council holding illegal secret meetings, improper executive sessions and city fees designed to block public records access.
By Sam Walters, The (Seneca) Journal | Read more
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Charleston County School Board and district sued over alleged open meetings laws violation
CHARLESTON — A Johns Island resident is suing the Charleston County School District and five board members, alleging they broke South Carolina open meetings laws when selecting a nominee to serve on the district’s education foundation board of directors.
The nomination of Brian McClure, which was made by board member Darlene Roberson to represent District 8 in the foundation, failed to gain the board’s majority at the Jan. 26 meeting and again on Feb. 25.
McClure alleges in a lawsuit filed March 18 that the majority faction of the school board — comprised of chairwoman Pamela McKinney, Leah Whatley, Keith Grybowski, Carlotta Bailey and Michele Leber — approved Michelle Faust, a different nominee who was not originally listed on the board’s agenda. They did so, he contends, without a 24-hour prior public notice for meeting agendas as required by the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
By Valerie Nava, The Post and Courier | Read more
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Federal judge: Pentagon press access policy is unconstitutional
Update from Erik Wemple, The New York Times: The Defense Department said it would close the Pentagon’s work area for journalists, among other changes, after a judge found the existing media policy unconstitutional.
A federal judge ruled on Friday that the Pentagon’s media access policy violated the Constitution, concluding in part that it was intended “to weed out disfavored journalists” and replace them with reporters who are “favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.”
The Pentagon’s new policy, which was implemented last fall, afforded government officials standardless discretion to deny, suspend, or revoke a journalist’s press pass for engaging in lawful newsgathering, including asking sources questions. Nearly the entire Pentagon press corps refused to sign the policy, choosing instead to turn in their press badges and leave the Pentagon.
The New York Times sued the Pentagon in December, alleging that the media access policy violated federal law and the First and Fifth Amendments. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of The Times’s lawsuit, arguing that the policy threatened to leave the public in the dark about critical matters of national defense and foreign policy.
In a 40-page ruling, Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sided with The Times. The judge found that the policy violated the First Amendment because it is “unreasonable” and discriminates based on viewpoint. He also concluded that the policy violated the Fifth Amendment because it failed to provide clear standards governing when a journalist’s press credential can be denied.
From Reporters Commitee for Freedom of the Press | Read more
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Copyright Office Proposes Significant Fee Increases, Requests Comments from Stakeholders
On March 20, the Copyright Office published a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding proposed changes to its fee schedule. The NPRM proposes substantial increases in certain fees, including raising the fee for news website group registrations from $95 to $350. The news website option was adopted in 2024 and provides publishers for the first time an easy way to register online content (see NMA’s guide to copyright registration here). The Office previously adjusted its fees in 2020. NMA is preparing a response ahead of the submission deadline on May 4, and interested members of the news industry are encouraged to get in touch. Following the NPRM, the proposed fee schedule will go into effect 120 days after it is provided to Congress, absent congressional action.
From News/Media Alliance | Read more
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How to engage and grow your audience on Local News Day
If your newsroom is looking for a way to rally community support and celebrate the essential role of local journalism, mark your calendars for April 9. Local News Day is a new grassroots movement designed to empower newsrooms to connect with their audiences and speak with one voice about the value they provide to their communities.
On a recent webinar for The Lab Link, the Lab for Journalism Funding’s alumni initiative, leaders from the Local News Day team shared the mission behind the movement and inspired newsrooms with ways to get involved. Newsrooms who sign up by March 26 will be included in a national newsroom directory and will have access to other resources to inspire engagement.
John Adams, founder and executive director of Montana Free Press, said he developed the idea for Local News Day through discussions with colleagues at Impactual, a social impact and creative consulting agency. He said the idea was modeled after successful national initiatives like Earth Day, Giving Tuesday and National Voter Registration Day.
“We thought we could really use a national day … that celebrates local news and the important role that local news plays in this country,” Adams said on the webinar. “It’s really about building an audience for local news … That great journalism that’s being done all over the country, it can’t have an impact unless people know about it.”
From Local Media Association | Read more
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AI advice from journalists who stopped talking and started building
Of the 440 applications Texas Tribune chief product officer Darla Cameron received for an AI engineering role, 90% were junk.
Many appeared to be written using the very tools candidates were supposed to understand. “Here’s a short response that’ll work for this,” one application read — an obvious artifact of copying and pasting from ChatGPT.
The anecdote, shared during the Hacks/Hackers and Poynter AIxJournalism Day at SXSW, captures the strange ways AI is transforming newsrooms. The technology can be genuinely useful when used responsibly, but it’s already producing unintended and often absurd side effects.
I spent the day at the event listening to panels on trust, product strategy, public media, newsroom AI tools and the economics of an industry in transition. Here are five lessons I took away.
By Alex Mahadevan, Poynter | Read more
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 | By John Foust, Advertising Trainer
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| Meet them where they are
“Meet them where they are” is a popular phrase these days. It is defined as “a concept that emphasizes understanding and accepting individuals without judgment based on their current emotional, mental, or physical state.”
The key word is “current.” We should deal with people as they currently are, not the way they were yesterday or the way they might be tomorrow.
I remember learning this important lesson at a young age. It started when I was 14 years old and my friend David and I saw a comedy film which featured a hospital, some doctors and a lot of pretty nurses. Then and there, we decided to get summer jobs at the local hospital. We were too young to work for pay, so we investigated volunteer work. The good news was that there was an active volunteer program for teenagers.
In those days, female teenage volunteers were Candy Stripers (they wore red and white striped uniforms) and males were Pilots (we wore tan shirts). When David and I went through the pre-work training, we noticed that Candy Stripers outnumbered Pilots by a sizeable margin. Since one of our main interests was to meet girls, this looked like a perfect opportunity. Read more
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