Barbara Ball, publisher of The Voice of Blythewood and Fairfield County, has been elected president of the S.C. Press Association after a vote of the Press Association’s membership.
Other officers elected were: Kyle Osteen, managing partner and co-owner of Osteen Publishing Co. which publishes The Sumter Item, as daily newspaper vice president; Jonathan Vickery, publisher and editor of The People-Sentinel in Barnwell as weekly newspaper vice president; and John Boyette, executive editor of the Aiken Standard as treasurer.
Elected to two-year terms on the SCPA Executive Committee were: Mundy Price, president, publisher and editor of the Index-Journal in Greenwood and Leisa Richardson, executive editor of the Greenville News, Herald-Journal and Independent Mail. Cris Temples, associate publisher of Charleston City Paper was elected to a one-year term.
Re-elected to continuing terms on the SCPA Executive Committee were: Jason Cato, managing editor of The Post and Courier in Charleston; Ryan Gilchrest, managing editor of Greenville Journal; and Rocky Nimmons, publisher of the Pickens County Courier.
Ball succeeds Hal Welch, editor and publisher of The Journal in Seneca.
“It is truly an honor to be named president of the South Carolina Press Association,” Ball said. “I’ve been a member of the Press Association for 25 years, so I’m keenly aware of what it does for its members at all levels. It educates and informs us, encourages us, stands up for us and showcases our work. I’m looking forward to working with our extraordinarily capable Association leaders as well as serving with the leaders of our newspapers from across the state as we all strive to do our best to deliver the news that matters to our communities.”
Ball began her newspaper career at age six, tagging along with her brother as he delivered the Wichita Falls Times in her rural hometown in Texas. She started her first newspaper in 1999, sold it in 2005, started The Voice of Blythewood in 2010 and The Voice of Fairfield County in 2012. The Voice was honored to be invited to serve as a partner on The Post and Courier’s Uncovered team in 2021. Ball and her newspapers have won a number of Press Association awards over the years including the Montgomery FOI Award, the Jay Bender Assertive Journalism Award and the Jim Davenport Award for Excellence in Government Reporting.

Related: Meet SCPA's 2026-2027 Officers and Executive Committee

SCPA presented more than 650 awards to its members during the group's 2026 Annual Meeting & Awards, held March 5-6 in Columbia.
Winners came from more than 3,000 entries that were judged by Virginia Press Association members earlier this year. 
View and download slides containing all 2025 News Contest winner information including name, news organization and graphic. This presentation also contains judges’ comments for First Place winners, as well as Best of the Best and secret winners.

Please visit scpress.org to learn more about these special awards. At this link you can also download the winners badge, view the Annual Meeting program, and order duplicate awards and plaque bases. 

Collegiate Awards will be presented March 27 in Columbia. 

During the SCPA Awards Banquet on March 6, SCPA surprised FOI Chair Richard Whiting with its Lifetime Achievement Award for his service to S.C. journalism and dedication to the public’s right to know.
Whiting retired from the Greenwood Index-Journal last spring after 45 years in journalism. While he got his start as a reporter in North Carolina, Whiting spent most of his career at the Index-Journal and Florence Morning News. During 26 years with the Index-Journal, the newspaper excelled in providing local news and information to Greenwood and surrounding communities.
Over the years, Whiting has been very active within SCPA, currently serving as FOI Chair, which leads the association’s open government initiatives and formulates strategies for dealing with open government issues. He is also a past president of SCPA, and is one of the first members to volunteer to help judge a contest, provide advice on an issue or call a fellow member to lend his ear or share a joke.

The State's Lee Bandy was inducted into the S.C. Journalism Hall of Fame on March 6 at the Annual Meeting and Awards Presentation.
Eighty-three journalists – from the 1700s to the present – have been chosen for this recognition.
Bandy, the political reporter who earned the title of dean of the South Carolina press corps, spent 40 years at The State newspaper, including two decades as the chief Washington correspondent for the newspaper covering a S.C. delegation that included such 20th century political figures as U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, U.S. Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings and U.S. Rep. William Jennings Bryan Dorn.
He was one of the first four inductees into The State-Record Hall of Fame. Bandy was named a South Carolina Press Association Journalist of the Year and was awarded the Order of the Palmetto by Gov. Mark Sanford in 2007.
Along the way, Bandy wrote 3,000 political columns, was inducted into the Gridiron Club and appeared frequently on national television. His retirement was noted in the Congressional Record.
Bandy’s journalistic career coincided with enormous political and social changes in the nation and South Carolina. He had an acute sense of the essential nature and value of local issues emanating from a national base. Please read more about this remarkable journalist.

Editor's Note: SCPA Attorney Jay Bender has written an Op-ed (available below), which members are encouraged to run in print and online. It is available on the News Exchange and will be emailed to editors later today. 
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster vetoed a proposal to keep NIL revenue-sharing payments a secret from the public Wednesday evening. Advocates of the legislation, including the University of South Carolina and Clemson athletic departments, argued making Name, Image and Likeness contracts public would prevent schools from recruiting top talent and make the programs less competitive. But McMaster said the bill’s provision shielding how much an athletic program spends on individual sports went too far.
The bill exempts contracts struck between universities and student athletes from state open records laws. It also exempts schools from disclosing how much it spends on individual sports teams.
McMaster said in the veto message he would sign a bill that allowed individual student contracts to be kept secret but made spending on teams public. Essentially, the public would know how much a school spends on NIL revenue-sharing contracts for its football team and women’s basketball team but not how much the starting quarterback or point guard earned. McMaster has been skeptical of NIL revenue-sharing programs, which allows college athletic programs to pay athletes. The governor had also been critical of the fast-tracked bill allowing NIL revenue-sharing to be kept secret from the public.
“I think it hurts college football, particularly,” McMaster told reporters last week. “On the other hand, that is the direction that this ocean is going, and we don’t want to put ourselves at a disadvantage, but there needs to be some action taken at some point, perhaps at the federal level, to clean this mess up.”
The General Assembly could still override McMaster’s veto. The bill had near unanimous support, 111-2, in the House and passed 30-13 on the Senate’s second reading of the bill. It would need support from a supermajority in both chambers to become law.
By Lucy Valeski, The State | Read more