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Your connection to industry & member news | June 29, 2023
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PALMY Ad Contest entries head off to judging; winners announced for proofing on July 72023 PALMY Ad Contest entries went off to judging last week.
Participation was strong with entries up five percent from last year.
Winners will be announced for proofing on July 7, but are not for release until July 20. Best of Show, Best Overall, Designer of the Year and the digital presentation of all winning ads with judges’ comments will be available on July 20.
Awards will be presented in person or mailed to winners in mid-to-late July. After winners are announced for proofing, SCPA staffers will reach out to see if you’d like to have a recognition event or if you’d prefer us to mail your awards.
Thanks to all the members who entered and to members of the Georgia Press Association for judging this special contest!
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Last call to place an ad in the '23-24 S.C. Media Directory If you'd like to place an ad in the newest edition of the S.C. Media Directory, now is the time reserve your space. Please contact Hank for rates and specs.
This important reference tool includes detailed information on the state's newspapers and other media outlets.
Ads are very affordable and can help promote your message to agencies, legislators, business leaders, fellow SCPA members and press associations across the Southeast.
The deadline to advertise is July 13.
Publishers will receive Directory listing proofs in the next two weeks.
The publication will come out later this summer.
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Should public have access to jailed people’s phone calls?
A [Charleston] television station is suing the Charleston County sheriff for refusing to provide copies of jailhouse tapes of Jamie Lee Komoroski, who is accused of driving drunk and killing a bride on her wedding night on Folly Beach. The lawsuit sets up a potential legal battle that pits the rights of defendants against the public’s right to information.
Gray Television LLC, the parent company of Live 5 News, contends in a complaint filed June 22 in Charleston County that Sheriff Kristin Graziano violated state public record law by denying reporters’ requests for access to Komoroski’s recorded phone and video calls from the county jail.
The lawsuit has implications for journalists reporting on law enforcement and people jailed throughout South Carolina awaiting trial and presumed innocent.
By Ema Rose Schumer, The Post and Courier | Read more
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The Link reporter arrested for taping note on town hall
A reporter for The Link spent a night in jail last week after being charged with a misdemeanor offense for allegedly doing $1 worth of vandalism to McBee Town Hall.
“I think this is a classic example of government officials with thin skin not understanding citizens’ rights to comment on governmental actions and petition or redress grievances,” said retired law professor Jay Bender, who also serves as an attorney for the S.C. Press Association and S.C. Broadcasters Association. “In other words, arresting this reporter for putting up a note with a piece of tape is unconstitutional.”
Seventy-year-old Robert Brian Monnie was charged with vandalism after taping a note to a glass window at McBee Town Hall directed at McBee Town Council member Robbie Liles. The note, which was initially placed on the building using packaging tape, reportedly read, “Bye, Bye Robbie,” according to a McBee Police Department report.
Liles is officially listed as the complainant on the McBee PD report, with the town hall building identified as the victim.
The note reportedly had fallen from the window when it was discovered by McBee Police Chief Michael Irvin, who contacted Liles about the discovery, followed by asking Deputy Solicitor Kernard Redman what criminal charges the posting should warrant.
The incident occurred around five days after Liles posted a message June 13 on his personal Facebook page criticizing an opinion piece written by Monnie in the June 7 issue of The Link. In the opinion piece, which was submitted by the newspaper’s weekly deadline of Friday, June 2, Monnie questioned the logistics of a proposed donation to Northeastern Technical College that would provide a satellite campus in McBee.
Monnie’s op-ed encouraged the “powers that be” to create a safe walking route to the building, as well as fully equip the facility.
By Joan Yates, The Link | Read more
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Shain takes new post at USC
Longtime S.C. journalist Andy Shain announced he's leaving The Post and Courier at the end the week to start a new job at the University of South Carolina as a special assistant to the president focusing on strategic communications.
For the past seven years, Shain has worked at The Post and Courier, most recently serving as managing editor of expansion. He also was managing editor for the Columbia and Myrtle Beach newsrooms, and supervised Statehouse coverage.
From 2007-2016, he worked at The State in various roles including assistant business editor and reporter. He previously worked for The Charlotte Observer and The Sun News.
A graduate of Northwestern University, Shain serves on the Board of the Columbia Rotary Club and the S.C. Center for Fathers and Families.
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 | The sun sets over the Atlantic off the beach of Saint-Louis, Senegal, on April 27, 2023. Andrew J. Whitaker/The Post and Courier
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| The Sahara Connection: How sand across the Atlantic is impacting hurricanes in the Lowcountry
The Post and Courier, with support from the Pulitzer Center, has released an investigation into the significance of the Sahara Desert on hurricanes on the East Coast. Reporter Tony Bartelme and Photojournalist Andrew Whitaker traveled to Senegal to report on the story.
“Hurricanes have shaped and defined Charleston’s history for centuries, sometimes you have to go far to tell a local story, and in this case, we had to go to West Africa,” Bartelme says. “This project is different from many others, in part, because we highlighted the work of West African scientists, the people who breathe the dust they study.”
Bartelme and Whitaker met with several researchers in Senegal while reporting on this story. One of the biggest challenges they faced was the language barrier, as many of the researchers either spoke French or Wolof. In order to represent these voices, The Post and Courier has translated the story in French.
Publisher and President, P.J. Browning reiterated one of the main forces driving the work the paper continues to do, “Our goal is to bring home stories that affect every single one of our readers. And what’s more important than the forces that shape our hurricanes? The more we learned about hurricanes, the better prepared we can be.”
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 An Alliance for Smiles patient got a new smile in early June during a mission trip to Hawassa, Ethiopia. | Photo by Micah Green for Alliance for Smiles
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|  | Micah and Kayla Green visited the Fasil Ghebbi, a fortress in Gondar, Ethiopia.
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| Micah and Kayla Green use journalism skills to help non-profit offering free cleft lip and palate surgeries
The Sumter Item's Kayla and Micah Green recently traveled to Ethiopia to volunteer for Alliance for Smiles' first trip to Hawassa, Ethiopia.
Alliance for Smiles is a 501(c)3 with the mission of forever improving and transforming the lives of children and communities impacted by cleft lip and palate by providing free comprehensive treatment, while training and equipping local teams to sustainably provide quality, long-term care.
The Greens were part of a 13-person team who helped 28 patients, between the ages of 3 months and 9 years, who got new smiles earlier this month. More were evaluated and had their charts recorded so they can receive additional health care, the hospital can perform their surgeries later or they can be contacted when AFS returns.
Micah who serves as chief digital officer of The Sumter Item, served as photography documentarian for the mission, taking environmental portraits and before-and-after surgery photos. Kayla, executive editor of the newspaper, wrote daily recaps as the group's writing documentarian.
This trip was Micah's fifth Alliance for Smiles trip.
Micah said his favorite mission moment is, "the opportunity to share and document human-led stories that matter. Being able to play a part in helping a genuinely good nonprofit continue its efforts."
The problem of cleft lip and palate is significant, particularly in developing regions of the world. It’s estimated that one in seven-hundred babies is born with a cleft condition, which often means they will unduly suffer physical, mental and emotional challenges. They often cannot breastfeed, may become malnourished and are prone to health challenges, like ear infections and hearing loss. Often, they experience upper-respiratory problems or speech and dental difficulties. Many need multiple operations and long-term treatment. They commonly endure isolation and ridicule, and are sometimes abused, abandoned, or even killed.
For many families access to surgical care is scarce or unaffordable. Alliance for Smiles offers these children and families hope for a brighter future.
Here's more info about AFS and the life-changing free cleft lip and palate surgeries they do all over the world.
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Newspapers, take note: How to make the most of public notices, now a very important part of your revenue
Along with open-meeting and freedom-of-information laws, public notice is an essential element of the three-legged stool of open government. The purpose of public notice is to prevent official actions from occurring in secret, and they have become an essential element in newspapers' revenue mix. But local officials and others keep lobbying state legislatures to cut back on paid notices.
Opponents argue that public notices should move from newspapers to the internet, so the local notices that run in your printed editions also need to run, with no additional charge, on your website – not just the statewide sites that many state newspaper associations maintain (sometimes as a legal requirement). Notices should never be behind a paywall.
If a public-notice ad has news value, write a story about it or at least direct readers to it via social media. If a public notice plays a role in a story, mention it – taking the opportunity to draw attention to the importance of notice publication in news media. To make sure this happens, designate someone to read the public notices in each publication.
Promote the effectiveness of public notices in your paper. “Delinquent taxes roll in – after debtors’ names are published” is an easy headline to imagine.
Promote public notices in your paper with house ads in print and online – with social media, rack cards, etc. Mention them in editorials and columns throughout the year. Maintain relationships not only with notice clients, but also legislative representatives.
Notices should be easy to find. Give them a home-page link. Don't bury them in “classifieds. Rethink your Public Notice section: use visual section headers; publish contact information of public-notice personnel; use headlines to break up groups of notices, and subheads. Create an index of notices, and create a glossary of public notice terms; it's an informative filler.
Don’t take public notice for granted. Treat public notice clients like customers. Help the buyers of public notices – your customers – meet statutory requirements. This is not always easy, but you need to be an expert to truly serve your client. You will provide value to clients and set yourself apart from potential competitors. This can be specially important for private-party clients, but local governments need help too.
Notices must be readable. The type size should be the same as main news. Each notice should be distinguishable from the surrounding text. They should appear in the paper as if we care whether or not people read them. Public notices are news.
Finally, accuracy is paramount. When newspapers mess up a notice, fail to publish it ,or publish it at the wrong time, that provides ammunition for those who want to stop paying for them.
From the Public Notice Resource Center and the Institute for Rural Journalism | Read more
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How to find facts and stories in civil court dockets: 7 tips from a whistleblower attorney
Last week, attorney Eugenie Reich shared tips and insights for finding facts and story ideas within court dockets for civil lawsuits, during an hourlong webinar hosted by The Journalist’s Resource.
Reich was an investigative reporter from 1998 to 2015, including for Nature, New Scientist and other science journalism outlets. She is author of the 2009 book “Plastic Fantastic,” chronicling the faked discovery of a superconductor made of plastic. Since 2018, she has worked in the Boston area as a lawyer representing whistleblowers.
A court docket is a record of everything that has happened during the course of a particular litigation, including court rulings, filings of key documents and notices of scheduled court hearings. ...
[Here are] seven tips Reich shared about navigating court dockets, including when in the court proceedings facts begin to be presented to a judge, where to turn for help understanding dockets and why dockets can be useful sources of factual information, regardless of the legal outcome of a case.
By Clark Merrefield, The Journalist's Resource | Read more
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How journalists cover lies is the most important issue in news media
Stephen Colbert could not have predicted how much his idea of “truthiness” would come to define American politics — or how much it would affect how journalists do their jobs.
The term, coined for the premiere of Colbert’s Comedy Central show in 2005, means to believe something is true because you want to believe it’s true. It’s truth by gut, rather than fact.
“Donald Trump took that to the extremes and challenged how journalists cover someone,” NPR TV critic Eric Deggans said Tuesday morning to a group gathered at Poynter for a breakfast with media insiders that also included an announcement of this year’s Bowtie Ball honoree. “Typically when someone is lying, journalists report that they’re lying and then they get embarrassed and stop doing it. That stopped happening.”
Deggans cited the challenges to fact-based truth as the No. 1 problem that journalists face today. Solutions are sparse.
By Ren LaForme, Poynter | Read more
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