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Your connection to industry & member news | Nov. 7, 2024
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Last call to register for Nov. 15 Cops & Courts roundtableIf you are a reporter who regularly covers public safety matters, now is the time to register for our Nov. 15 roundtable.
Tomorrow is the final day to sign up for this event, which will be held at SCPA Offices on Nov. 15, from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.
This event will be an informal space to share ideas and collaborate on how to best cover the complex issues related to this beat.
Topics are up to the group, but may include: story/series ideas, FOI/legal issues, building trust with sources, storytelling with data, using the public index and clerk of court’s office, hot button issues related to covering law enforcement and courts, challenges you face on the beat and more. We’ll also allow time for open discussion.
SCPA Attorney Taylor Smith will be on hand to talk about legal and FOI matters, as well as answer your questions.
The cost to attend is $30, which includes a boxed lunch. Sign up to attend!
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|  Thanks to South Carolina's journalists, who did a great job covering the election! We appreciate all you've done to inform South Carolinians about local, state and national races and issues. Check out our Facebook page for election front pages. If you have a front to include, please email it to us.
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Your newspaper & SCPublicNotices.com
Your newspaper’s public notice/legal ad section is a great tool for reporters to know what’s happening in your community. From notices about businesses applying to for an application to sell alcoholic beverages to public bodies’ hearings on budgets and ordinances, reporters should regularly read these important notices and share highlights or interesting information found. These notices can also be accessed on our statewide public notice site, which is searchable by location and keyword.
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Hartsell to retire as sports editor; Stevens, Hale named new editors
After 40 years at The Post and Courier, Jeff Hartsell is retiring as sports editor of the South’s oldest daily newspaper.
Kata Stevens has been named as the new sports editor, and Post and Courier veteran Dave Hale will be associate sports editor.
Hartsell, 62, joined The Post and Courier in 1984 after graduating from the University of South Carolina’s Honors College. He’s covered every sports beat at the newspaper, was twice named S.C. sportswriter of the year by the National Sports Media Association and won numerous awards from the S.C. Press Association.
Hartsell also has covered The Masters, the Ryder Cup, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Women’s Open golf tournament and the Credit One Charleston Open tennis tournament since it was the Family Circle Cup on Hilton Head Island. He was promoted to sports editor in 2022.
Stevens grew up on Hilton Head and returns to the Palmetto State after 11 years in New York, where she graduated from Fordham University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has covered sports at all levels across the New York metropolitan region, from N.Y. Giants football to the Brooklyn Nets and the NBA to horse racing and college sports.
She joins The Post and Courier after four years leading audio efforts at McClatchy, where her collaborations with the company’s 30 local newsrooms have earned her two Associated Press Sports Editor awards. She is also a former Poynter-Koch fellow.
Hale, a graduate of College of Charleston who was previously a sports writer with The Aiken Standard and sports editor at The Beaufort Gazette, has been with The Post and Courier since 2007 as a page designer and assistant news editor. He has won numerous S.C. Press Association awards for sports writing, sports page design, headline writing and more.
From The Post and Courier | Read more
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T&D’s ‘best all around’ retiring after 48 years
... Come Nov. 1, the woman behind the scenes for everything that keeps [The Times and Democrat] newspaper operating will retire. No one is looking forward to the day – maybe other than Georgianne [Walton].
How it started
A native of Orangeburg, Georgianne began work at The T&D 48 years ago on Nov. 26, 1976, at age 19, after completing Willington Academy and attending Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College.
In her words:
“Publisher Dean Livingston’s daughter, Donna, and I were friends since fourth grade at Sheridan School. The Livingston family has always been very dear to me. I stopped by here (T&D office) to see if there were any openings and to fill out an application.
“Donna was here working over the Thanksgiving holidays. When she saw me, she said, ‘Georgianne, did Daddy get in touch with you? He was just asking me if I knew what you were doing because he has an opening in the composition department and wondered if you needed a job.’
“I told her that I had not spoken to him, but that very day I had been to Southern Bell and DPU looking for a job and was passing by here and thought I would see if there were any openings. So it was meant to be! I started the following Monday, not knowing what I would be doing or what rate of pay, I just knew I had a job!”
Thus launched a career that would see her fill multiple roles.
“I worked in composition for a few years, then transferred to the business office. Over the years, I have had many titles: business manager and assistant to the publisher, human resource director, assistant controller, production manager, and currently operations director."
By Lee Harter, The Times and Democrat | Read more
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|  | Cheers to Randall Savely, Co-Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of SCPA and SCNN, who celebrates 25 years of working with the organizations!
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Four denials: How North Myrtle Beach illegally handles Freedom of Information doc requests
In recent weeks, the City of North Myrtle Beach has called to remove their city manager, had him sign a confidentiality agreement about the end of his employment and denied four Freedom of Information Act requests.
All of these denials are illegal, according to South Carolina Press Association attorney Taylor Smith.
“Assuming you even have an expectation of privacy and the performance of your public duties, which our Supreme Court has already rejected in most circumstances, if you chose to withhold an entire record under a claim of exemption, you would use what the statute says as your tool, meaning, with redaction, you can black out every single word, even perhaps punctuation, if that would reveal somehow information that is private,” he said. “That is the way in which they would withhold the personnel file lawfully, which they’re not doing here.”
By Elizabeth Brewer, The Sun News | Read more
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Does the First Amendment protect you from harassing poll workers? Midlands YouTuber tests the limits.
COLUMBIA — Police were called last week after a self-described “constitutional rights journalist” filmed and argued with poll workers and voters at a Richland County early voting location.
Richland County’s director of voting, Travis Alexander, is asking law enforcement for guidance on what they can do with such disruptors, but so far he hasn't received any clear answers.
On Oct. 25, a man who runs a YouTube channel called Live BD filmed people in line to vote at Brook Church on Parklane Road, according to Alexander.
The man is one of many amateur cameramen who record officials and the insides of public buildings to test the limits of their First Amendment rights. ...
Law enforcement wouldn't be running into any constitutional protections if they removed someone disrupting poll workers and voters, according to retired First Amendment attorney Jay Bender.
“An individual has no constitutional right that protects his interfering with voters or election workers, regardless of the self-appointed label they might have given themselves,” Bender said. “Government has the power to restrict conduct, including access to polling places except to voters, poll workers, and duly appointed poll watchers without being in violation of anyone’s constitutional rights.”
By Josh Archote, The Post and Courier Columbia | Read more
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Editorial: Even if SC taxpayers needed a private hunt club, we don't need a secret one
You can understand why Sumter officials don’t want to talk about their fancy-schmancy “welcome center” next door to Shaw Air Force Base, which locks out the public and welcomes only a select few.
Well, make that “our” welcome center, since South Carolina taxpayers have kicked in at least $1.5 million for the $3.4 million lodge-like complex and are in the process of distributing another $4.3 million to “revitalize” a barn into an even larger meeting space. With no public plans to open it to the public.
As The Post and Courier’s Tony Bartelme and Seth Taylor report in the latest installment of our Uncovered investigative series, the lodge is set on 900 acres of mostly undeveloped forests, ponds and fields and hosts private hunts for specially invited VIPs under circumstances that are not entirely clear. Also not entirely clear is who is allowed to use the lodge, which has accommodations for overnight guests and features a $10,301 conference table made of ancient cypress and a $14,218 security camera system at the gate to keep out the great unwashed.
Mr. Bartelme and Mr. Taylor tried to get more information about who can access the gated property and who can't, how much it costs to operate, where the money to operate it comes from and its use as what is essentially a private hunt club. They tried to get a site tour. They finally published what they know after being put off for three weeks by officials who say they really want to explain things but are just too busy.
It already had taken five months just to pry basic public information out of the city, and that came with a hefty price tag, even though most governments provide basic public information at no charge and in a matter of days, as state law encourages them to do for matters of public interest. But if you’re trying to hide your secretive hunt club, it probably doesn’t feel to you like it's in the public interest to answer questions about it.
From The Post and Courier | Read more
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Man who killed newspaper carrier for The State is going to prison, SC prosecutor says
Years after a newspaper carrier for The State was killed in a fiery crash that ended in a church parking lot another man is going to prison, according to the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
On Oct. 29, Malik Williams pleaded guilty to a felony DUI (resulting in death) charge, the solicitor’s office said in a news release. Williams was sentenced to 10 years in a South Carolina Department of Corrections prison, according to the release.
Donald D. Wheeler Jr., a 49-year-old Columbia resident, died in the Jan. 9, 2022 wreck, Richland County Coroner Naida Rutherford said at the time. Wheeler was a carrier for The State newspaper.
By Noah Feit, The State | Read more
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Jan. 31 is deadline to enter Center for Integrity in News Reporting Awards, with $100,000 in cash prizes
The Center for Integrity in News Reporting Awards will award four $25,000 awards for the most fair, impartial, objective news reporting that has the courage to not fear and the discipline to not favor.
News reports published in the calendar year 2024 are eligible for submission.
Jan. 31 is the deadline to submit entries. There is no entry fee.
Judging will be done by the Newspaper Association Managers, the national organization of the state press associations.
SCPA member news organizations are strongly encouraged to enter this contest. Learn more
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Enter the Collier Prize for State Accountability by Jan. 31
The entry period for the $25,000 Collier Prize for State Government Accountability is now open. The Collier Prize for State Government Accountability at the University of Florida recognizes the best U.S. professional reporting on state government accountability in any medium or on any platform. Entries will be judged on how well they reflect excellence in accountability coverage of state government, with special attention paid to overcoming particular challenges or difficulties in reporting or publishing, and any significant impact from the reporting.
The award will be announced at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April. Entries are based on state-level reporting in 2024 and can be submitted by any news organization.
The 2025 prize will consist of one $25,000 winner, one $5,000 winner, and one $2,500 winner. The entry deadline is Jan. 31. Learn more
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What audiences really want: For journalists to connect with them as people
Ask journalists about the core professional values that define good journalism, and the answers have been pretty consistent across the decades and even, to a large extent, around much of the world: factuality, impartiality, public service, autonomy, and ethics. These values are settled and foundational enough to constitute what Dutch media scholar Mark Deuze once called “the occupational ideology of journalism.”
But journalists aren’t the only ones with a stake in what those values are. Especially if journalists see their work as a public service, the opinions of the public they’re serving about what makes good journalism should be important as well.
Several studies over the years have examined what the public sees as good journalism, though as they measure audience opinions, those studies have often drawn from established journalistic values and roles — that is, the values that journalists have outlined for themselves. So, if audiences got to name their journalistic values from scratch, what would they could up with?
By Mark Coddington and Seth Lewis, Nieman Lab | Read more
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Jim Hoagland, Washington Post Pulitzer-winning voice on world affairs, dies at 84
Editor's Note: Hoagland, a Rock Hill native and graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Journalism, worked as a sports writer for The State and the Columbia Record.
Jim Hoagland, a Washington Post journalist whose intrepid reporting and erudite columns were twice honored with the Pulitzer Prize and made him for decades a leading voice in world affairs, died Nov. 4 at a hospital in Washington. He was 84.
The cause was a stroke, said his son, Lee Hoagland.
Mr. Hoagland began his education in a two-room schoolhouse in South Carolina and first traveled abroad after college on a Rotary scholarship that took him to France. He found in newspapering a means to see and understand the world and was hired in 1966 at The Post, where he distinguished himself early on as one of the premier foreign correspondents of his generation.
“Give him an airline ticket and stand back,” John Anderson, his editor on the foreign desk, told the Associated Press in 1971 when Mr. Hoagland received his first Pulitzer, in the international reporting category, for his dispatches from South Africa on the struggle against apartheid. Mr. Hoagland was only 31 at the time.
By Emily Langer, The Washington Post | Read more
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| Compelling Writing with Jerry Bellune
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By: Jerry Bellune, Writing Coach
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| Reporting the stories behind the stories
Public officials and PR people may tell the truth but rarely the whole truth.
It may take some digging to find the story behind the story.
For example, a high school football coach recently resigned just before the season started.
His teams had won three state championships.
He said he resigned for “personal reasons.”
That usually means he was caught doing something he shouldn’t have.
Perhaps something embarrassing – or even criminal.
As you know, high school, college and professional sports have produced numerous scandals involving gambling, sexual harassment, abuse of athletes, girl friends and spouses and other crimes.
This is not confined to sports.
Public and corporate officials resign or are prosecuted for embezzling, dumping toxic waste and other crimes. Private citizens get caught, too.
What to do if you suspect there’s more to the story? Read more
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