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Your connection to industry & member news | Sept. 26, 2024
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S.C. Journalism Hall of Fame nominations due Dec. 6The deadline to nominate someone for the S.C. Journalism Hall of Fame is Dec. 6.
The Hall of Fame was established in 1973 to recognize and honor men and women who have excelled in their craft and made significant contributions to journalism and their communities.
Requirements for admission specify that a nominee must have made his or her journalistic reputation in South Carolina. If the reputation reflects achievements outside the state, the nominee must have been a native of South Carolina. Nominees must have been deceased for four or more years.
Nominations may be made by anyone now or previously employed by or associated with a South Carolina newspaper.
We will honor Hall of Fame recipients at the Annual Meeting and Awards on April 4, 2025.
Here's how to nominate someone for the Hall of Fame.
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SCPA to host Cops & Courts Roundtable on Nov. 15Do you cover cops and courts? Reporters and editors who regularly cover public safety matters are invited to join their peers for a roundtable on Friday, Nov. 15, from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., at SCPA Offices in Columbia.
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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Don't forget the Oct. 1 USPS Statement of Ownership filing deadline Oct. 1 is the deadline for paid newspaper members to file your annual Statement of Ownership (PS 3526) with the post office. This form must be published in your newspaper: - Oct. 10 for publications issued more frequently than weekly
- Oct. 31 for publications issued weekly or less frequently but more frequently than monthly
- First issue produced after Oct. 1 for monthly publications
Members should also email SCPA a copy of the form or an e-tearsheet showing publication of your form by Nov. 1.
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Last chance to advertise in the '25 SC Media DirectoryIt's last call to place an ad in the S.C. Press Association's annual guide to the Palmetto State's news media. The S.C. Media Directory is an important reference tool that includes detailed information on the state's newspapers and online news organizations including contact information, key personnel, reach, advertising information and more. The directory also includes info about South Carolina's college newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, SCPA's Associate and Individual members and commercial print providers.
A variety of ad sizes are available. Rates start as low as $50.
The deadline to advertise is Sept. 30. If you're interested in advertising, contact SCPA.
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|  Twenty SCPA members attended last week's Postal Academy featuring Brad Hill of Interlink. Special thanks to Hill, who walked attendees through best practices, postal changes and all things mail entry.
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Ethics guides & training
SCPA has received a few calls recently from editors facing ethical dilemmas. SPJ has several good resources including the SPJ Code of Ethics, which links each principle to additional explanations, sourcing and resources. SPJ's code is not a set of rules, rather a guide that encourages all who engage in journalism to take responsibility for the information they provide, regardless of medium.
Poynter also has a great 90-minute, self-directed course, "Ethics for Editors: How to Manage and Advise on Ethical Issues." The training will give you an elevated view of the ethics involved in editing, from providing managerial guidance for writers to spotting and solving sticky situations in communications. It is $50 to enroll.
Have a tool, tip, resource or hack that you'd like to share with fellow SCPA members? Tell us what's helping you do your job and we'll share it here in a future newsletter!
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SC sheriff racked up $53K on county credit card, from buffets to beach stays. Council never knew.
SPARTANBURG — Fancy steakhouses, stays at a ritzy beach resort, subscriptions to Amazon Prime and Sirius XM radio, and almost $12,000 in Apple.com purchases — all are among more than $53,600 in spending that Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright put on his county-funded credit card.
From December 2017 through April 2018, he spent $8,000 on fast food, steakhouses and pizza joints and another $8,000 on high-end hotels, according to a review of more than six years of spending records The Post and Courier obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Wright, whose salary last year topped $199,000 before a $15,000 state stipend, also spent public money on movie-streaming services, a keto diet brand, Wish.com, Best Buy, Tractor Supply and more than $1,600 at Dollar General, plus a handful of fitness and aviation websites, among other purchases.
He was elected in 2004, beating 16-year incumbent Bill Coffey after campaigning on a platform of more proactive policing. For most of his 20 years as sheriff, he's had a county-funded credit card and seemingly no oversight for how he uses it, with his highest rates of spending coming in recent years.
By Christian Boschult, The Post and Courier Spartanburg | Read more
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Longtime North Myrtle Beach city manager plans to fight his firing with email records
NORTH MYRTLE BEACH — Ousted City Manager Mike Mahaney has a plan for appealing his sudden removal by North Myrtle Beach leaders last week.
Mahaney, 74, contends that email exchanges with city leaders in February will provide the basis for his appeal. He said the emails show most council members did not ask him to hire a grants coordinator, despite the council voting to remove him for that reason. ...
But Mahaney's emails, which were obtained by The Post and Courier, show that he initially offered to hire a grants coordinator if the majority of council members wanted that. Only three council members replied with any support for the hiring. There are seven total council members, including the mayor. ...
Apart from the issue of Mahaney's appeal, the emails show city leaders trying to circumvent the state's open meetings law, said Jay Bender, a media law attorney with over four decades of experience.
"It was soliciting a vote on a matter of city business in the absence of a properly notice and convened public meeting," Bender said via email. "A city council can only act at meetings. Individual council members directing the city manager to take an action has no official or binding status. Had the majority of the council responded affirmatively or negatively to the email from the city manager’s inquiry that would have been a vote taken at an illegal electronic meeting. Electronic communications may not be used to circumvent the law to take action or discuss a matter within the authority of the council."
But the council's decision to remove Mahaney also appears problematic, he said.
"It appears that the city manager erred by soliciting a vote by email, and the council erred by firing the city manager for his failure to take an action that had not been approved by council in accordance with the law," Bender said.
By Nicole Ziege, The Post and Courier Myrtle Beach | Read more
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Myrtle Beach pastor J.P. Miller says a paralegal labeled him a killer. He's suing her for $6M.
Editor's Note: We recently mailed copies of Jay's new libel manual to S.C. newrooms. Tell us if you need extra copies. We'll also host our next FOI/Libel Zoom training on Nov. 14 if you'd like to RSVP.
MYRTLE BEACH — John-Paul "J.P." Miller, the Myrtle Beach pastor who made international headlines in April after his wife Mica's body was found in a North Carolina state park, filed a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit this week against a local paralegal after she told an interviewer that Miller had said he wanted to "destroy" his wife.
The pastor of Solid Rock At Market Common is suing Melissa Mancari in the Horry County Court of Common Pleas. He's seeking a $1 million judgment against her and $5 million in punitive damages, according to the Sept. 17 complaint. ...
Jay Bender, a media law attorney with over 40 years of experience, said that defamation is the publication of a false statement of fact and concerning someone that is injurious to their reputation, or holds that individual up to scorn, ridicule or abuse.
"If he (Miller) can prove that the statements were false, they were made with the requisite level of fault on the part of the defendant (Mancari), not just innocent misstatement, and that it has injured his reputation, he should be able to recover something," Bender said. "He would have a much higher burden to try to recover punitive damages."
The court will need to determine whether Miller would have been considered a public figure or a private citizen at the time the allegedly defamatory statements were made, Bender said.
Politicians, celebrities and other public figures pursuing a libel case face a higher bar for success than private citizens do. That's because of the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, which established the standard that public figures show the individual publishing a false statement acted with actual malice.
"In South Carolina, one can become a public figure involuntarily by a connection to a matter of public interest," Bender said, adding that the national attention garnered around Mica Miller's death could qualify as such. "It will be an interesting case."
By Charles D. Perry and Nicole Ziege, The Post and Courier Myrtle Beach | Read more
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National Police Index launch shows police officer names and employment in 17 states
A nationwide coalition of journalists, attorneys, researchers, and transparency advocates recently announced the release of a new data tool for residents of 17 states to access the employment history for all law enforcement officers in the state, including South Carolina.
Significantly, where available, the data tool shows the recorded reason for an officer’s separation from a position, and allows users to download subsets or the entirety of the underlying data.
The National Police Index is a public data project led by reporter Sam Stecklow of Invisible Institute, a nonprofit public accountability journalism organization based in Chicago, created in partnership with Ayyub Ibrahim of the Louisiana Law Enforcement Accountability Database of Innocence Project New Orleans, and Tarak Shah of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group.
“The National Police Index works to make real the bedrock principle that records that relate to police transparency belong to the people,”said Craig Futterman, a former public defender and director of the University of Chicago Law School’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project.
View reporting on the ongoing fight to access this data on the Invisible Institute's site.
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Post and Courier names Stevens as sports editor; Hartsell retires Nov. 1
Kata Stevens has joined The Post and Courier as sports editor.
She will fill behind Jeff Hartsell, who is retiring on Nov. 1 after an outstanding 40-year career with the newspaper.
Stevens most recently led podcasting efforts at McClatchy and before that worked in a variety of sports writing and editing roles.
She is a 2017 graduate of Fordham University and also received her Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University.
Stevens was part of the 2023-2024 class of Poynter-Koch Fellows.
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Lexington County Chronicle hires reporter
The Lexington County Chronicle has hired Sophia Sousa as a reporter.
Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Sousa graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in May with a major in communication studies. During her senior year, she was a news writer for the school's newspaper, The Carolinian.
She recently served as a freelance writer for The Clemmons (N.C.) Courier.
Sousa has two dogs, Mikey, a 10-year-old German shepherd mix, and Coquito, a 3-year-old Cotonese. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with friends and family, reading, baking, going on walks and watching movies. Read more
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 | A 1996 photo which accompanied a profile piece on Sam Woodring shows the former publisher of The North Augusta Star in his office. (FILE PHOTO)
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| Celebrating The (North Augusta) Star, ‘Your Hometown Newspaper Since 1954’
It has been 70 years this month since the late Sam Woodring paid $1,000 to take a failing weekly newspaper off the hands of two men who invested six weeks of effort in the project before giving up.
Sam had returned home to Pennsylvania following World War II, finished Juniata College, met and married Mim, and was in search of a career. He had an aunt who lived in Augusta, and she sent him an ad she saw in the paper looking for trainers and such at the new nuclear facility in the area.
Sam and Mim joined the hordes of folks who headed this way, and they both got jobs. When the need for trainers waned somewhat, Sam got laid off. Mim, who had continued at the Savannah River Plant as a clerk, came home one day to Sam’s announcement: “I bought a newspaper today!” Mim replied, “I didn’t know you wanted a newspaper.” Sam responded, “You never asked.”
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Since then The Star has been “your hometown newspaper” for 70 years and counting. It has morphed over time, but the goal has always been to keep the residents of North Augusta informed about everything happening in the community – what's happening in city government to what's happening in area schools, who's getting married, who's making strides in their chosen careers, what's happening in the churches, who was born, who has died, what local clubs and civic groups are up to, which local sports teams are playing and opinions on all of the above.
By Phyllis Britt, Contributor, The Post and Courier North Augusta/The Star | Read more
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SC among states making it easier to cancel subscriptions
Editor's Note: SCPA is working on a white paper with best practices and a plain-language legal interpretation on how this could impact newspaper subscriptions. SCPA is also monitoring the FTC's propsed amendments to the Negative Option Rule.
... South Carolina’s law, which took effect in May, requires companies to notify customers of any automatic subscription renewal 30 to 60 days in advance.
The notification must “conspicuously disclose” the pending charge and provide details on how to cancel if they don’t want to pay, such as a toll-free number, email address “or other cost-effective, timely, and easy-to-use mechanism for cancellation.” If customers do nothing after getting that information, the charge will go through.
Senate President Thomas Alexander said he introduced the measure last year after a constituent called him about an automatic renewal that caught him by surprise.
Not only do companies make it difficult to keep track of often-increasing charges, but they make it “hard to know how to terminate,” Alexander, R-Walhalla, told the SC Daily Gazette on Tuesday.
But the law, which passed both chambers unanimously in the spring, means in the Palmetto State “they’re going to have to make the consumer aware and that the higher rate will be imposed on them if they do not act,” he said, calling the consumer-friendly law an example of “government the way it ought to work.”
A company’s failure to comply makes the contract unenforceable. The South Carolina law excludes service contracts with phone carriers, cable companies and internet providers — basically, companies that bill for services monthly, Alexander said.
By Elaine S. Povich, South Carolina Daily Gazette | Read more
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USPS announces no rate increase in January 2025
The United States Postal Service announced on Sept. 20 that there will not be a price increase in January 2025 for Market Dominant products, which includes Periodicals, Marketing Mail, First-Class Mail, and Package Services. Postmaster General DeJoy said the USPS will wait until at least July before proposing any increases. The Alliance and other stakeholders have repeatedly raised concerns about alarming rate increases and poor service delivery.
By Holly Lubart, News/Media Alliance | Read more
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ITC holds hearing on aluminum printing plate tariffs
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) held a hearing on September 17 to consider proposed tariffs on Aluminum Lithographic Printing Plates from China and Japan. A range of impacted businesses testified against the tariffs, but no party testified in favor of new tariffs on printing plates. Adam Meyer, Publisher of The Jackson Hole News & Guide and COO of Teton Media Works in Jackson, Wyoming, testified that the trade case and resulting duties will cause serious harm to the news media industry. A portion of the testimony centered around whether customers switch suppliers due to quality or price. The commissioners held a closed-door session, followed by closing arguments. The ITC will vote and make a final determination about whether injury has occurred on October 22. On November 4, the ITC will issue a written rationale for the decision. The Department of Commerce (Commerce) has until September 20 to sign final anti-dumping and countervailing determinations. The hearing record is attached. The DC Journal ran an op-ed from the Alliance on September 17 urging the ITC to reject the tariffs.
By Holly Lubart, News/Media Alliance | Read more
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Poynter offers free health misinformation training on Oct. 4
In partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Risk Less. Do More. campaign, this free, 90-minute Poynter webinar featuring CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta will help journalists debunk false narratives about vaccines and respiratory illnesses, find out about the common falsehoods that experts are tracking, and access reliable data and legitimate information about vaccination rates and trends in the communities journalists cover.
In this webinar, you will:
- Understand how vaccine misinformation spreads and what some of its common narratives are.
- Analyze some examples of vaccine-related misinformation.
- Learn how to debunk vaccine misinformation for audiences across platforms.
- Get tools and techniques to track vaccine misinformation and report on community vaccination trends.
- Learn how to “prebunk” information and how that practice can serve your audience.
- Gain knowledge of data sources that are useful in reporting on vaccines and respiratory illnesses.
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Your phone has a free, hidden scanning feature
Smartphones are the Swiss Army knives of the digital world, but not all of their tools are obvious. Case in point: Your camera app is clearly designed to snap photos and capture videos, but did you know that it’s also a mobile scanning app?
If you’re like me, you may have spent years just taking photos of documents—receipts for reimbursement, school and medical forms, and other paperwork—rather than using a hardware scanner or a mobile scanning app.
Snapshots can get the job done, but the results aren’t as good as using your phone’s camera in document-scanning mode, which can automatically crop the image to the paper’s edges and even extract text.
This feature is available on Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones; iPhone owners can scan documents with the built-in Notes app. Here’s how to do it.
By Melanie Pinola, Wirecutter | Read more
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By Benjy Hamm,
Institute for Rural Journalism
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| Community newspapers can benefit from more effective promotion and marketing
ESPN has long promoted itself as the “worldwide leader in sports.” You can forgive its audience if they don’t realize that ESPN has been losing millions of customers who have been “cutting the cord” from cable and satellite TV.
ESPN’s long-time business model -- and that of cable TV -- has been collapsing in recent years, even though it remains profitable and has retained a loyal audience. Sound familiar? But in the face of many difficulties, ESPN has never stopped relentlessly and effectively promoting its shows, content, employees and overall brand.
When I talk to my students and community groups, most people have a highly favorable opinion of ESPN and overestimate its average audience and business outlook.
Compared to ESPN and most TV and radio stations, newspapers are reticent to promote themselves, outside of an occasional story about awards they’ve won, a house ad during National Newspaper Week or subscription flyers. That approach is grounded in a news philosophy 200 years old that valued the anonymity of journalists – emphasizing that the stories are more important. And it has continued for other reasons, too, including the fact that many newspaper journalists don’t see the need for promotion, and some even find it unseemly.
Our modesty – and in many cases silence – about the value of what journalists do and the importance of strong community newspapers might have worked OK when the media world was less competitive and newspapers were flourishing. But in this era of an attention economy and endless demands on people’s time, a lack of marketing and promotion is damaging.
That vacuum also has allowed others to define us, and frequently in extremely negative terms. When I speak to community groups or at events, even loyal newspaper readers express concerns that “no one reads a newspaper” anymore, that newspapers are dying and that “everyone gets their news on their phone.” You know that’s not true. A lot of people read your stories, your great journalism changes lives and changes laws, and the cell phones people use are simply another way news and information is delivered. Read more
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By John Foust,
Advertising Trainer
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| Think like an interviewer
We’ve all heard and used the term “sales presentation.” It has become a catch-all term to describe a wide range of meetings with existing and potential advertisers. Many salespeople have the idea that – if they’re not presenting something in every conversation with prospects – they’re not really selling. The result is a lot of meaningless blather which is of no interest to the other person.
Corey sees things differently. “As the manager of our ad team, I never use the word ‘presentation’ to refer to first-time meetings. In those meetings, we’re there to listen, not present. Our objective is to learn about their businesses, so we can provide the services they need. I like to think of it as conducting interviews.
“The salespeople in our building have a lot in common with the reporters. They both need information in order to be at their best. Reporters spend a lot of time interviewing their subjects,” he said. “There’s no way for them to get their stories by doing all of the talking. They ask questions and learn along the way. It just makes sense for us to do the same thing with our prospects.”
According to a number of web sites, salespeople do 65 to 75 percent of the talking during their sales calls. Corey wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers are much higher for initial meetings: “Because salespeople talk way too much, it helps our team to see themselves as interviewers. We even encourage them to say at the beginning, ‘In order to make the best use of your time, would it be okay for me to ask some questions to learn more about your business?’ Since the other person has agreed to the meeting, there’s a good chance they’ll say ‘yes.’ That sets the tone for an interview format. Talk less, listen more.”
What does it take to be a good interviewer? Read more
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Dec. 6 | Deadline to enter the News Contest
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