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Your connection to industry & member news | Dec. 5, 2024
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CONTEST DEADLINE IS TOMORROWThe clock is winding down on entering the 2024 News Contest! The deadline is tomorrow, Dec. 6.
The News Contest is an excellent opportunity to recognize the good work done by your staff during the previous year. All entries can be submitted digitally so it is quick and easy to enter!
We're here to help! Give us a call at (803) 750-9561 or email us if you need your log-in information or have contest questions.
Starting next week, SCPA will review all entries to make sure they're ready for judging. When we've sorted your organization's entries, you'll receive an invoice and master entry report.
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2025 Press IDs available
It's time to order your staff's 2025 press IDs. High-quality plastic photo ID cards are available for SCPA newspaper members at $7 each. These durable plastic cards feature your staff member's photo and newspaper information.
Repositionable PRESS windshield clings are also available for $3 each.
Orders must come from member newspaper and online news publication editors. News organization staffers, part-time employees and freelancers must contact their editor to order a press ID and/or decal.
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Judges needed for SCPA Collegiate ContestSCPA is looking for a dozen volunteers to judge SCPA's Collegiate Contest online in late December/early January. Categories include news, features, opinion and sports writing, photography, design and digital. Judges will receive instructions and entries in mid-December and will have three weeks to complete the judging. Let us know if you can help.
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RSVP for Jan. 9 Legislative Workshop for the Media
Make plans to join members of the General Assembly Thursday, Jan. 9, from 9:30 a.m. through 3:30 p.m. at the Statehouse as we discuss various topics that will impact the Palmetto State in 2025.
This event – sponsored by the S.C. Press Association, S.C. Broadcasters Association, SCETV and The Associated Press – is a one-stop shop for the media to interview members of both the House and Senate. Panelists will be announced as they are confirmed.
We recommend this event for editors, reporters, editorial writers, publishers and managers.
All discussions are on the record.
Lunch will be provided.
If you register by Dec. 31, the fee to attend is only $60. If you register between Jan. 1 - Jan. 6, the fee will increase to $70. Registrations will not be accepted after Monday, Jan. 6.
Please note space is limited and this event is only open to members of SCPA, AP and SCBA.
Register here.
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|  | Member publishers and managers, please check your email and review/approve your proof for the 2025 edition of the S.C. Media Directory, which we hope to send to the printer next week.
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 | The Daniel Island News Publisher Sue Detar gives the Philip Simmons Middle School yearbook staff a behind-the-scenes look at the production process of the weekly newspaper. (Photo by Caley Smith)
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| Future journalists make headlines at Daniel Island News
The Daniel Island News got a special visit on Nov. 25, from the Philip Simmons Middle School yearbook staff, who stepped into the newsroom to get a first-hand look at how a community newspaper comes to life.
Guided by their teacher, Scott Morrison, the students jumped right into the action, learning from publisher Sue Detar, associate publisher Patrick Villegas, editor Caley Smith, and reporter Emma Slaven about what it takes to put out the paper each week.
The morning was hands-on and engaging. Students rotated through interactive stations, diving into everything from social media strategies and photo captions to headline writing, layout, and pagination.
Smith took the aspiring journalists outside for a quick photography lesson, covering the rule of thirds, using natural light and capturing that perfect shot.
The group rounded out their newsroom experience with a lively Q&A session, leaving with some DI News swag – and maybe even the chance to contribute photos to the paper in the future.
By Caley Smith, The Daniel Island News | Read more
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 | Clarendon native Russell Mellette shows his wife, Grace's, baseball at his senior living facility in Lexington County. Mellette writes letters to dozens of people regularly, a way to share history and his life. (Photo By Adam Flash, The Sumter Item)
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| 86-year-old Lexington resident uses letters to honor S.C. history and tell his story
There is a signed baseball displayed in a curio case with oak framing and glass windows.
It sits behind a name plate, oak, too, with the name Russell D. Mellette engraved with black lettering on gold plating. There are also statues of dachshunds in the case.
Russell doesn't know whose signature is on the ball.
It looks like it starts with an "S." And Russell, a guy whose friends in his senior living quarters call him the human Google, does not know who signed the ball.
But his late wife, Grace, did. She was an Atlanta Braves fan, he said, so perhaps the signature belongs to Steve Avery or Sid Bream. Regardless, the ball was Grace's, so there it will sit, in her husband's curio case. The curio case, too, was Grace's.
Roughly two years widowed, 86-year-old Russell describes his late wife as fiercely independent. In the pictures that line his walls, Grace's cheekbones sit high on her face, leading one to glance at her glance. Her poignant stare, a stare that her husband loves in present tense. In the pictures around his residence at the Lexington County senior living facility, in her baseball kept secure in her curio case and in Russell's stories, Grace is kept in the present tense.
There's a framed picture of her where she's smiling extra big. She's posing with the University of South Carolina's first Black basketball player, L. Casey Manning Sr.
Russell's room is plastered in stuff like this. Paper versions of personal loves and published history. These photographs, newspaper snippets and posters serve two worlds for him. His personal and his professional.
Russell was a journalist whose career started sometime in the '50s. A South Carolina journalist with most of his bylines having appeared in The State newspaper, the Clarendon County-born Baptist was also a lobbyist for mental health and organ donation.
Not more than 5 feet tall and perhaps a couple of inches, Russell is a talker. A smiler. A storyteller.
And his stories are dynamic in that they shift from personal experience to public knowledge quickly. Russell speaks of state legislation and old friends in the same sentence, for example.
He shows how the line between personal and professional blurs when you're a journalist. The storyteller's story is told in their storytelling.
Stories of economic development, elections, boards, commissions, public safety and more are personal to Russell.
By Bryn Eddy, Lexington County Chronicle | Read more
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Clemson censures Councilwoman Watt
CLEMSON — Clemson City Council voted to censure one of its own at its meeting on Monday.
In a resolution submitted by Councilman Bob Brookover, he alleged that City Councilwoman Catherine Watt had been disrespectful to members of the public and other members of city council during public meetings, “seemingly” captured and revealed matters discussed in executive session to third parties without council’s authorization, the “apparent delivery” of “privileged and/or confidential” information without council’s authorization, impugned the integrity of council, staff and members of the public, violated campaign rules while running for mayor and has “regularly and continually interfered with the orderly conduct of the business” of city council and the city. ...
The Journal reached out to South Carolina Press Association attorneys Jay Bender and Taylor Smith for each of their takes on the situation.
Bender said the censure resolution was a “tyranny of the majority.”
“A censure has no legal consequence, and there is no provision in the Freedom of Information Act that would preclude a council member from disclosing discussions in executive session,” Bender said. “If the member being censured has a sense of humor she will announce that she is having it framed and will display it in an appropriate place to demonstrate that the majority of council is intolerant to anyone who questions the actions of the majority.”
Smith said that it appeared to him that city council has the authority under its ordinance and state laws.
“The central constitutional question is whether the application of those ordinances to the censured city council will 1) be considered a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction on the censured member’s rights of speech and 2) whether a reasonable person would understand that their adjudicated conduct was within what they have been censured (due process guarantees),” Smith wrote in an email to The Journal. “It seems likely that this resolution will result in litigation, if passed.”
By Caleb Gilbert, The Journal | Read more
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Internal documents, inspection reports reveal history of escapes at SC monkey facility
The S.C. facility where 43 monkeys escaped this month has a history of escapes, animal deaths and alleged mistreatment, according to inspection reports and complaints from animal rights advocacy groups.
Documents obtained by The State present a critical portrait of a company that has emerged as a leading provider of nonhuman primates for medical research.
Alpha Genesis Inc. runs two facilities in South Carolina, one in Yemassee and the other on Morgan Island, that breed and raise monkeys for use in medical experiments. While the company performs some experiments on the monkeys, the majority of the roughly 10,000 animals are raised to be provided to other labs. Alpha Genesis also provides monkey “bioproducts,” including plasma, blood and tissue.
By Ted Clifford, The State | Read more
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2025 Brechner FOIA Award open, $3,000 prize
Entries for the 2025 Brechner Freedom of Information Award are being accepted through Jan. 10, 2025, to recognize outstanding records-based news reporting aired or published during 2024.
The award has been presented annually since 1986 by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications to reward excellence in reporting that draws on government documents and data, shedding light on official secrecy. The first-place winner will receive $3,000. It is free to enter.
Non-academic stories or series of stories related to freedom of information or based heavily on public records, and published in a general circulation news medium (print, online or broadcast) will meet contest eligibility. Successful contestants will showcase how their reporting drew on documents and data to spotlight previously under-appreciated issues or otherwise used the power of transparency for the public’s benefit against untoward secrecy in powerful institutions. Here are more details.
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Trump tells Republicans to ‘kill’ reporter shield bill passed unanimously by House
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Nov. 20 instructed congressional Republicans to block the passage of a bipartisan federal shield bill intended to strengthen the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources, dealing a potentially fatal political blow to the measure — even though the Republican-controlled House had already passed it unanimously.
The call by Mr. Trump makes it less likely that the bill — the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or PRESS Act — will reach the Senate floor and be passed before the current session of Congress ends next month. Even one senator can hold up the bill, chewing up many hours of Senate floor time that could be spent on confirming judges or passing other legislation deemed to be a higher priority.
By Charlie Savage, The New York Times | Read more
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Hindsight and adaptation: How local media is rethinking digital advertising
Hindsight is 20/20, but there’s the rub. That perfect vision clearly reveals the mistake you made or the change you dismissed as unimportant. But it was quite significant, even historical, impacting you, your business and your community. For several decades, such has been the tale of local legacy media — a story often told and widely understood.
The web and social media are for social chit-chat. Digital media and digital advertising will always maintain our decades-long relationships with local advertisers and positively affect our bottom line. We are the voice of the community, the ultimate source for local information.”
Of course, hindsight tells a different story. As local advertisers’ attitudes about digital media and digital advertising changed (often 180 degrees), new and established businesses decided that having a web presence and adding digital advertising to their marketing mix was a priority. As local media observed advertisers’ increasing attraction to digital advertising and how it could help them engage more directly with their customers, local media outlets discovered they weren’t prepared to compete for digital ad dollars.
To their credit, much of the local media responded with energy and effort, knowing survival and the future were at stake. They’re generally still in a reactive mode. However, there is evidence that the news industry and all local legacy media are reinventing themselves to be better positioned to battle for their share of digital ad dollars
- Entrepreneurs new to the news industry are revitalizing news deserts
- Established news outlets are reinventing their business models
- Journalists have expanded their reporting to new topics and issues
- Ad teams are recognizing the value of first-party data.
- Legacy media ad reps are learning how to sell digital advertising, often as the first choice on the menu.
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|  SCPA members are invited to join veteran media expert Ron Speechley, VP of Sales at Legacy.com, for a New England Newspaper & Press Association 30-minute webinar that dives into the evolving world of obituaries and their essential role in community news. Drawing on insights from over 1,500 newspapers, this educational session will empower attendees with the knowledge and strategies to strengthen their obituary offerings. This event will be held Dec. 10 at noon and is free for SCPA members (select NENPA Member on the registration form). Learn more and register here.
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| Compelling Writing with Jerry Bellune
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By Jerry Bellune, Writing Coach
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| Do you believe you’re creative?
Do you think your reporting, research, interviewing, writing, revising and editing are creative?
Unlike fiction writers – unhampered by little more than their imaginations – we journalists stick to facts and strive for accuracy.
We are creative, too, says University of Connecticut professor James C. Kaufman.
He always wanted to be a creative writer, he says.
He tried fiction, poetry, plays, sports writing and news journalism.
In his senior year in college, he decided he wasn’t good enough at any of those.
What did he do?
He found his calling in the psychology of creativity. He set out to learn everything he could about creativity and how our minds work.
As a result he has written or edited more than 50 books, including Creativity 101.When he sets out to write a book, his initial inspiration is not what’s most important. For him, the creative process involves research, talking with colleagues about their findings, forcing himself to write when he feels blocked and revising to make a book as readable as possible. Read more
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