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Your connection to industry & member news | April 8, 2020
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 | Suzanne Detar
President
The Daniel Island News
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Daniel Island News publisher to lead state press association
Suzanne Detar, publisher of The Daniel Island News, has been elected president of the S.C. Press Association after a digital vote of the Press Association’s membership.
Other officers elected were: Don Kausler Jr., regional editor of the Morning News in Florence, as daily newspaper vice president; Charles Swenson, editor of the Coastal Observer in Pawleys Island as weekly newspaper vice president; and Richard Whiting, executive editor of the Index-Journal in Greenwood as treasurer.
Elected to two-year terms on the SCPA Executive Committee were: Kevin Drake, publisher of the Herald-Journal in Spartanburg; Rhonda Overbey, publisher of the Aiken Standard; and Brian Tolley, executive editor of The State in Columbia, The Island Packet on Hilton Head Island and the Beaufort Gazette.
Re-elected to continuing terms on the SCPA Executive Committee were: Nathaniel Abraham Jr., publisher of Carolina Panorama in Columbia; Katie Goodman Murphy, general manager and advertising director for Bluffton Today and Jasper County Sun Times in Ridgeland; and Mike Mischner, group publisher for Camden Media Co.
“We have a strong, active press association that provides needed services and advice to our members. I look forward to working with our organization and its dedicated staff to support our member papers in providing great journalism in our readers across the state,” Detar said.
“As we contend with and adjust to the challenges and impacts of the COVID-19 virus on our industry, I am confident that our association will continue to provide guidance and support to our members.”
Detar started The Daniel Island News in 2003 and has led the paper through 16 years of growth, contraction, challenges and changes in the newspaper industry and in her community.
A 1988 graduate of Lafayette College with a degree in Government & Law and Russian Studies, Sue is also a 1991 graduate of Temple University School of Law. Prior to starting the paper, she taught political science at Charleston Southern University. Sue's legal experience is in construction and engineering law and in general business.
Detar is married to Thomas Werner and has three grown children, Benjamin, Carly and Jackson. She is a resident of Daniel Island.
Detar succeeds P.J. Browning, publisher of The Post and Courier in Charleston.
The press association was founded in 1852 and serves the state's 15 daily and 83 weekly newspapers.
The election was held digitally after the association’s annual meeting in March had to be postponed due to the coronavirus.
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|  | Don Kausler Jr.
VP Dailies
Morning News,
Florence
| |  | Charles Swenson
VP Weeklies
Coastal Observer,
Pawleys Island
| |  | Richard Whiting
Treasurer
Index-Journal,
Greenwood
| |  | Immediate Past President
P.J. Browning
The Post and Courier,
Charleston
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|  | Kevin Drake
Herald-Journal,
Spartanburg
| |  | Rhonda Overbey
Aiken Standard
| |  | Brian Tolley
The State, The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette
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|  | Nathaniel Abraham Jr.
Carolina Panorama,
Columbia
| |  | Katie Goodman Murphy
Bluffton Today and Jasper County Sun Times
| |  | Mike Mischner
Camden Media Co.
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Klonie Jordan of the Gaffney Ledger retires after 29 years
For Klonie Jordan, the best part of being a newspaper editor is “putting out a new product each day.”
“It’s not an assembly line. It’s new and different every day,” he said.
Jordan will start a new and different life today, retiring after serving as editor of this newspaper for the past 29 years.
Born in southwest Virginia, Jordan learned the nuts and bolts of reporting, writing and editing on his high school newspaper staff.
After starting his career at a weekly newspaper near his hometown, he took a job as a sports reporter at a West Virginia newspaper.
“I always loved sports,” Jordan said. “In high school, we used to keep records and predict NFL games. We kept stats and kept baseball stat sheets.”
By Larry Hilliard, The Gaffney Ledger | Read more
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Post and Courier prison investigation wins IRE Award
The Post and Courier has received first-place honors in the prestigious IRE Awards for its coverage of a 2018 killing spree that left seven inmates dead and dozens more severely wounded inside a maximum-security South Carolina prison.
The annual IRE Awards recognize outstanding investigative work from across the nation. The Post and Courier was honored for ”‘IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO DIE’: How flaws in the SC prison system led to seven deaths in a single night.” Other winners included The Washington Post, ProPublica, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Hearst Connecticut Media.
The April 15, 2018, riot at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville marked America’s deadliest prison violence in 25 years. Yet more than a year after the bloodshed, the public had been told little about what transpired that night or the events that preceded the violence.
The Post and Courier set out to change that, and reporters Jennifer Berry Hawes, Stephen Hobbs, Glenn Smith and Seanna Adcox spent eight months collecting thousands of pages of documents through open-records requests, public archives and other sources. They also interviewed more than 150 state officials, experts, attorneys, current and former correctional officers, and inmates — including direct witnesses to the violence — as photographer Andrew Whitaker documented conditions at Lee. Read more.
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LMA launches COVID-19 Local News Fund
Local Media Association has launched the COVID-19 Local News Fund — democratizing tax-deductible donations to local news organizations through our 501(c)(3) foundation. This program is available for independent and family-owned media companies only. They’re hosting a series of webinars for information on how to receive assistance. Read more.
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A good failure: Changing our newsletter promos
Newsletters have increasingly become the go-to resource for engaging and growing audiences. Most organizations see slow, steady growth in newsletter signups. Many of you have been encouraged to work on improving the wording, website placement and visibility of your pitches to readers to sign up.
At the Columbia Missourian, we tried — yet failed — to get a dramatic bump in newsletter subscriptions. Will our tactics work for you? The good news is that our email signups continued to grow, so our experiments didn’t cost anything but a little time. We were averaging a net gain of about 50 new subscribers a month. But the pace didn’t significantly increase from previous months after we made the email signup changes.
Why did we feel the need to switch? We felt that our email signup prompt was static and buried at the bottom of a rail of ads on the right side of our homepage. “Sign up for newsletters” was the simple header with a link for readers to select which newsletters they wanted. The signup also came up as a prompt when a reader registered as a new user on the site.
By Fred Anklam, Columbia MIssourian | Read more
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By John Foust,
Advertising Trainer
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Prepare a go-bag for presentations
Richard is an advertiser who has seen years of sales presentations. His pet peeve is any salesperson who shows up unprepared. “It’s a waste of valuable time to be in a meeting where someone is not ready for the topic at hand,” he said.
“I remember a meeting with an ad manager – a manager – and he showed up with no briefcase or folder, no rate information, and nothing to use for note-taking. All he had was a business card. I guess he thought his presence in the room would be enough for me to decide to run ads with his company. When I mentioned that it would be helpful to see a copy of his paper, he said he would have someone bring a copy later. His whole approach was arrogant and lackadaisical. It didn’t take long for me to decide that I could get along just fine without doing business with him.”
Although Richard’s example is extreme, it illustrates the importance of preparation. There’s a lot truth in the old saying, “Perception is reality.” If a prospect perceives that a salesperson is unprepared, that becomes their reality – and the result is a large obstacle for the salesperson to overcome. Read more.
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| Thanks Annual Meeting Sponsors!
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Even though the Annual Meeting has been postponed until September, please take a moment to visit these special organizations online.
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