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Your connection to industry & member news | Feb. 26, 2026
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Annual Meeting Awards Luncheon sold outPlease note that no late or same-day registrations will be accepted for the Annual Meeting Awards Luncheon on March 6 as we are at room capacity for the ballroom where the luncheon will be held. Only ticketed registrants may attend this event. Registrants will receive a detailed meeting confirmation tomorrow. We can't wait to see more than 200 SCPA members and friends next week!
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 Sen. Luke Rankin, SCPA Attorney Jay Bender and Coastal Carolina's Chance Miller chat before Wednesday's hearing on the NIL. Photo by Travis Bell.
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Do USC, Clemson use state funds for revenue-sharing NIL payments to athletes?
As the University of South Carolina and Clemson are now paying some of their athletes, lawmakers want clarity on where the money comes from for NIL revenue-sharing agreements before granting the schools more secrecy.
Athletic directors promised senators Wednesday no state money or tuition dollars have been, or will be, used to pay student athletes. But as universities’ financial support for their athletics has grown in the past year, NIL revenue-sharing has put additional financial pressures on department budgets, the athletic directors told lawmakers.
Some senators were satisfied with the firewall athletic directors said existed between state funds and tuition and revenue-sharing payments. Others believed the strain Name, Image and Likeness puts on budgets is leading to more tuition money going toward athletic departments and, indirectly, revenue-sharing payments.
“It is a reshuffling of money, in a way,” said Sen. Michael Johnson, R-York, “You are losing X amount of revenue that is going out here to NIL, you have less money here, so you have to have the institution give you more in order to operate.”
“And that is a direct result of NIL,” Johnson continued. “Can we agree on that?”
“I think it is one of the biggest factors, for sure,” University of South Carolina Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati responded.
Three of South Carolina’s public Division I athletic directors — Donati of the University of South Carolina, Graham Neff of Clemson and Chance Miller of Coastal Carolina — testified in front of Senate lawmakers after a bill they said would help with competitiveness was held-up in the upper chamber last week.
The bill would exempt athletic departments’ revenue-sharing payments to student athletes from open records laws. Colleges would not have to disclose to the public how much it pays student athletes, or even how much revenue-sharing money goes to each sport.
By Lucy Valeski and Jordan Kaye, The State | Read more
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SC colleges are paying athletes. The Statehouse wants to know if NIL deals include public money.An amendment to South Carolina’s name, image, and likeness (NIL) law shielding athletes’ revenue-sharing contracts from public view was seemingly on a fast track to Gov. Henry McMaster's desk just a couple of days ago.
But fresh concern about the funding sources of schools’ deals with athletes has prompted legislators to slam the brakes.
The same day the S.C. Senate passed an updated NIL bill — 30-13 on a Feb. 17 roll call vote — The Post and Courier published a report detailing how Clemson and the University of South Carolina’s athletic departments receive “institutional support” to fund athletics.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who has opposed the bill, took to the dais on Feb. 18 to express severe misgivings about the pending legislation, because legislators seeking to exempt athletes’ contracts from open records laws have argued athletic departments are funded with “private” dollars, including millions from broadcast rights, and athletes aren’t paid with public money.
Apparently, legislators hadn’t parsed through the finances in detail, because alarm bells went off after they read Clemson athletics received just over $20 million in institutional support from the university during the 2025 fiscal year. The University of South Carolina sent around $22 million to its athletic department in 2024.
By Jon Blau, The Post and Courier | Read more
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Hicks: If SC colleges lose Legislature's trust on revenue sharing, they've lost the gameSouth Carolina colleges and universities had the legislative equivalent of a 1st-and-goal on about the 6-inch line.
And now there’s a chance, slim as it is, that they’re going to blow the game and lose the support of their biggest boosters.
Which could hurt them for an unforeseeable number of seasons.
See, this past week the General Assembly was set to pass legislation that would allow state schools to hide how much money they pay student athletes under these revenue-sharing contracts.
The schools, in the middle of a losing lawsuit over this, claim they don’t have to show their books because they use what they call private money for revenue-sharing payments. Not to be confused with NIL payments, which the schools want you to confuse them with, so you won't realize they're paying salaries to players.
Lawmakers agreed — enough to change a state law that would tilt the field decisively in the schools' favor.
In just two days, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that gave them legal cover. On Tuesday, it cleared the Senate on a veto-proof majority. All it needed was a routine third reading from senators.
Which is, in parlance, a gimme.
That outcome wasn’t a surprise, because the colleges — particularly Clemson — get just about anything they want from folks at the Statehouse. Lots of Tiger and Gamecock alumni among their ranks, football fans all.
But then, The Post and Courier’s Jon Blau published an article about NCAA disclosure forms that showed last year Clemson athletics had been subsidized by the university — which runs on tuition and state appropriations, which even they acknowledge is public money — to the tune of about $20 million.
By Brian Hicks, The Post and Courier | Read more
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Our view: If it’s public money, it ought to be publicSo, uh, 49 wrongs make a right?”
That was powerful Cherokee County Republican Sen. Harvey Peeler asking exactly the right question in a Statehouse hearing room last week.
The issue? Whether South Carolina should allow public colleges like Clemson and the University of South Carolina to shield the big bucks they’re paying their football players from disclosure under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
After all, proponents insisted, every other state in the country is doing it. And if we don’t join them, it might put our teams at — horrors — a competitive disadvantage.
Hence Peeler’s question. And the emphatic answer he received a few moments later when his committee colleagues voted YES! on the measure.
Senate leaders then rushed the bill onto the floor this week where it prevailed early 30-13, but it still faces questions.
Because, football. Or as some of the more optimistic members might put it . . . National championship, baby.
Of course, senators should be congratulated for slowing down long enough to have a hearing at all — even if they did skip the normal subcommittee meeting where members of the public would have been allowed to speak.
From Charleston City Paper | Read more
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Editorial: Clemson, USC subsidies of athletic programs undermine secrecy justificationsWe learned something encouraging Wednesday when the S.C. Senate at least temporarily paused the Legislature’s mad rush to hide tens of millions of dollars a year in public spending. Facts apparently matter. Honesty might matter as well.
Pretty much everybody had declared H.4902 a done deal after the Senate voted 30-13 on Tuesday to pass the bill, which would allow USC, Clemson and South Carolina’s other football colleges to keep secret all the details of the revenue-sharing agreements they sign with athletes. The only question was whether Gov. Henry McMaster would sign or veto the bill that he has rightly worried would hide unquestionably public information from the public.
But then The Post and Courier’s Jon Blau reported that in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, Clemson University — the academic side — donated $20.2 million to prop up Clemson's athletic program. The “direct institutional support,” as the NCAA calls it, constituted about 10 percent of the athletic department’s budget.
Money is fungible, so there are lots of things you can say that $20.2 million subsidy is paying for. Maybe, as the university would like us to think, it covers the cost of the out-of-state tuition the athletic department doesn’t charge its scholarship athletes. Maybe, as Mr. Blau suggested, it covers the cost of not killing the men’s track and cross country programs and, as a result, having to create women’s lacrosse and gymnastics teams, in order to comply with the still apparently politically acceptable Title IX gender-equity law.
But it’s just as reasonable to say that starting this year, the $20.2 million Clemson diverted from academics could go toward the $20.5 million it’s paying athletes to play on its football and (presumably) other teams.
From The Post and Courier | Read more
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In other Statehouse news:- SCPA is monitoring multiple bills dealing with data centers. SCPA Attorney Taylor Smith testified and provided an amendment to S. 902 last week, which would strengthen FOIA wording. He will testify on S. 867 with similar concerns next week.
- Smith will also testify on H. 5075, the Personal Privacy Protection Act, today. This bill is an expansion of secret records and governmental information in the state.
- Two police buffer bills, H. 4763 and S. 175, are moving through committees despite litigation in several other states. Courts have blocked similar laws in Indiana, Louisiana and Arizona for being unconstitutionally vague. There’s pending litigation in Tennessee and Florida. As Jessica Holdman of the SC Daily Gazette reports, there are already S.C. laws on the books to address obstruction of justice. Seth Stoughton, a former police officer turned USC law professor noted that continuing to pass such laws after they’ve been repeatedly struck down isn’t likely to make a difference for the challenges first responders face.
- S. 454, the Charter School Accountability bill that passed the Senate earlier this month, was discussed in a House Education Subcommittee on Tuesday. SCPA has let the committee know that we support this effort to increase accountability and transparency efforts relating to S.C. charter schools and their authorizers.
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Sunshine Week set for March 15-21Sunshine Week is set for March 15-21, 2026. Sunshine Week is a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.
We encourage you to write and share editorials, stories and columns about the importance of openness to your community. Please share your Sunshine Week articles, projects and events with SCPA so we can help promote them.
Here is SCPA's quarter page ad, available in color and black-and-white.
The national Sunshine Week project has several resources, including logos, cartoons, games and more. More content, including columns, will be added in the coming month. Sunshine Week is coordinated by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications and includes many partners, including SCPA.
Make plans now to join the annual nationwide celebration of access to public information and what it means for you and your community. It’s your right to know.
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By David Keating, Institute for Free Speech
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| Stronger free speech protections long overdue in South CarolinaEditor's Note: H. 3305 passed the House and second reading in the Senate last year, but is stalled on third reading contested calendar.
Shutting down someone’s free speech with a meritless, costly lawsuit sounds downright un-American.
But in South Carolina, it’s a genuine risk because of the state’s lack of a law protecting citizens against such suits.
Take the Charleston Animal Society, for example. Publicly raising concerns about animal welfare triggered years of litigation for the group.
In 2017, the animal society publicized a video showing a carriage horse named Big John lying on the street, alleging mistreatment. Charleston Carriage Works responded not with a rebuttal, but with a lawsuit accusing the society of slander and business interference.
The case dragged on for years before a judge finally ruled in the animal society's favor. Unfortunately, that came only after the society incurred significant legal expenses to defend its First Amendment-protected speech.
The lawsuit followed a familiar pattern. Specifically, it was a “SLAPP,” a strategic lawsuit against public participation. These suits aim to silence critics by forcing them to endure expensive litigation, regardless of the case’s merit. Without protections against SLAPPs, defendants can suffer financially and emotionally — even when they win. Moreover, the looming threat of SLAPPs chills other speakers into silence to avoid similar suits.
My organization, the Institute for Free Speech, tracks anti-SLAPP protections nationwide in our Anti-SLAPP Report Card. Measured against the rest of the country, South Carolina flunks. Read more
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|  A friendly reminder to SCPA members who volunteered to judge Virginia Press Association's News and Advertising Contests – TODAY is the deadline to review entries and submit judgements. If you have any questions or issues, please reach out to Janet Madison at VPA.
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Is Town of Blythewood using two-tiered scheme to hide public records for Juneteenth $20K?
BLYTHEWOOD – Blythewood town hall charged The Voice $500 to answer a Dec. 19 FOI (Freedom of Information) request concerning a $20,000 hospitality tax award. During the Nov. 24 town council meeting, Councilman Donald Brock said that the $20,000 “walked away and it isn’t being accounted for.” At the Jan. 28 town council meeting, Council members called on the Town’s Interim Manager Ed Driggers and Town Attorney Pete Balthazor to explain the $500 FOI charge.
Driggers said neither he nor the town staff can search and retrieve emails in answer to FOI requests. He said that’s because the Town uses a third-party vendor, ATG (Asset Technological Group), to manage and store emails. He said requests for emails must be searched and retrieved by the vendor, a service for which there is a $500 minimum charge, according to Driggers and Balthazor.
Columbia Media Attorney Jay Bender, who represents the S.C. Press Association, questioned that arrangement.
“It appears that by placing the Town’s email records with a firm not subject to the Town’s control, the Town is violating state law in two regards,” Bender said.
“First, the custodian of public records is to keep them secure in such ‘arrangement as to be easily accessible for convenient use.’ The Town has failed to do this,” he said.
“Second, the law requires records to ‘be kept in the buildings in which they are ordinarily used’ with exceptions that have no bearing on this situation. The town has failed to do this.
“A refusal or willful neglect of duties with respect to public records is a misdemeanor,” Bender warned.
By Barbara Ball, The Voice of Blythewood & Fairfield County | Read more
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Lexington County Sheriff’s Department says ICE won’t let them release arrest warrants
LEXINGTON — The Lexington County Sheriff’s Department is refusing to provide The Post and Courier information about what charges U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees were originally taken into custody for. They say it’s because the federal agency won’t let them.
In South Carolina, most ICE arrests are done through the Criminal Alien Program. Through CAP, agents are allowed to enter local jails to interview inmates suspected to be here illegally, and determine whether or not to take them into federal custody.
While they might end up in ICE custody, the inmate is originally brought to jail after being arrested by local law enforcement on a state charge.
So before any of them become ICE detainees, they are first local detainees subject to South Carolina law.
Data provided by ICE shows that in Lexington County, 184 people were arrested by Lexington County deputies on non-immigration charges, before later being taken into ICE custody.
The department’s legal counsel denied a Freedom of Information Act request for state warrants for all the people who were first arrested by Lexington County Sheriff’s Department, citing Title 8, section 236.6 in the Code of Federal Regulations.
“No person, including any state or local government entity or any privately operated detention facility, that houses, maintains, provides services to, or otherwise holds any detainee on behalf of (ICE) ... shall disclose or otherwise permit to be made public the name of, or other information relating to, such detainee,” the code reads. “Insofar as any documents or other records contain such information, such documents shall not be public records.”
By Chloe Barlow, The Post and Courier Columbia | Read more
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Calhoun Falls warns of water shutoffs amid $600,000 lawsuit to City of Abbeville
CALHOUN FALLS — Calhoun Falls officials warned Monday that water service will begin being shut off March 1 for customers who have not paid their bills, as the town faces roughly $600,000 in overdue water payments to the City of Abbeville.
Mayor Viggo Lassen said the town has not made a full wholesale water payment since September 2024.
“We owe $600,000 for the water bill that hasn’t been paid,” Lassen said during the Feb. 23 council meeting. “If we don’t get water bills paid, this is what happens.” ...
The Index-Journal filed two Freedom of Information Act requests through the town for employee rosters, timesheets, benefits, expense expenditures, payroll, water bill payments and bank statements for 2022-25. These were filed back in Nov. 2025 and Feb. 10. The town remains out of compliance for both FOI requests, and no timeline has been set for when documents will be provided.
By Renee Ortiz, Index-Journal | Read more
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SC hospitals aren’t required to disclose measles-related admissions. That leaves doctors in the dark.
In mid-January, an unassuming man in khakis and a button-down shirt walked to a wooden lectern at a school board meeting in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Most chairs in the audience were empty. The man, Tim Smith, was the only person signed up to speak during public comments. He had five minutes.
“I trust that each one of you had a good Christmas and New Year’s,” he began. “Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing.”
His wife is an assistant teacher at a public elementary school in the county, epicenter of the state’s historic measles outbreak, and shortly before winter break she’d received a notice that a child in her classroom had measles. Given his wife is fully vaccinated, he wasn’t worried.
Then, she began to get sick. And sicker. She got a measles test and, to their shock, it came back positive. She was apparently among the very rare breakthrough infections.
Frightened, they took her to the hospital that night. “My wife was throwing up,” Smith said at the meeting. “She had diarrhea. She couldn’t breathe. All for what? This is — it’s absolute insanity.” ...
South Carolina doesn’t require hospitals to report admissions for measles, potentially obscuring the disease’s severity. In the absence of mandatory reporting rules, she and other doctors are often left to rely on rumors, their grapevines of colleagues, and the fragments of information the state public health agency is able to gather and willing to share.
With 973 reported cases, South Carolina’s measles outbreak has ballooned into the nation’s largest since the virus was declared eliminated in the U.S. 25 years ago. Yet, since state health officials first confirmed the outbreak on Oct. 2, the state’s hospitals have reported only 20 measles-related admissions, or about 2% of cases. Some infectious disease experts say that the true number is likely much higher.
By Jennifer Berry Hawes, Pro Publica | Read more
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Judge says government may not search devices seized from Post reporter
A federal judge in Virginia rejected the Justice Department’s request to search through a Washington Post reporter’s electronic devices as part of a national security leak investigation, ruling that the court would instead be responsible for conducting the search.
In a 22-page opinion, Magistrate Judge William Porter admonished the Justice Department, saying the government could not be trusted to conduct the search on its own and that prosecutors’ actions in obtaining a search warrant for reporter Hannah Natanson’s home had shaken the deference and latitude that judges typically afford to government attorneys.
The ruling Tuesday afternoon is a victory, at least in part, for The Post and Natanson, who said that allowing the government to search through her phone and laptop computer would risk exposing the identities of her sources and could have a chilling effect on future sources who wish to speak to reporters.
The court, however, did not order an immediate return of the devices to Natanson.
By Perry Stein, The Washington Post | Read more
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News/Media Alliance applauds Supreme Court decision overruling IEPPA tariffs
The News/Media Alliance applauds the Supreme Court of the United States for its decision today declaring the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEPPA) tariffs as unlawful.
In response to this ruling, Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, said:
“We support strong trade enforcement to protect U.S. industries and U.S. jobs. Tariffs, however, are counterproductive and unnecessary. Their further implementation would result in the loss of thousands of jobs in the already-stressed U.S. publishing, printing, and paper industries, leading to less quality journalism available to the American people. They imperil our news-gathering missions and put communities that rely upon a healthy newspaper in jeopardy.
While this ruling impacts the IEPPA tariffs, the Alliance remains concerned about other potential tariffs under consideration, as newspapers and magazines depend on imports of newsprint, paper, ink, aluminum plates and printing equipment. Tariffs on the press raise First Amendment concerns, and imports from Canada and other countries that are major suppliers of paper or publishing products to the U.S. must be exempt.”
From News/Media Alliance | Read more
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Email newsletters as a source of news
Three-in-ten Americans at least sometimes get news from newsletters, but many don’t read most of the newsletters they get.
Email newsletters have become a familiar format for news. But this pathway to news remains somewhat niche, and even among Americans who get news from email newsletters, a majority say they don’t end up reading most of the newsletters they receive.
Three-in-ten U.S. adults say they get news from newsletters at least sometimes, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in August 2025. While digital platforms, such as news websites, search engines and social media are all more common pathways to news, newsletters offer a distinct format for briefings, opinions and deep dives. And unlike many other digital formats, similar shares of Americans across age groups get news from email newsletters.
By Michael Lipka, Katerina Eva Matsa and Emily Tomasik, Pew Research Center | Read more
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New study reveals how to keep readers’ attention in digital age
New research from Temple’s Fox School of Business shows that while headlines are important when it comes to grabbing readers’ attention, storytelling design is key when it comes to maintaining it.
Since the dawn of newspapers in the 17th century, journalists' and storytellers’ top mechanism for capturing a reader’s attention has been the same: a story’s headline and lede.
Today, those two journalism mechanisms remain as important as ever, especially given the rise of the Internet and the introduction of search engine optimization. However, a new study from Temple University’s Fox School of Business has found that while headlines grab attention, it is storytelling design that determines whether an audience sticks with a story. Recently accepted for publication in Information Systems Research, the scholarly journal article “How to Tell a (News) Story? Quantifying the Impact of News Format and Storytelling on Engagement” found that reader engagement is shaped not only by what the story says but by how it is told.
By Steve Orbanek, Temple University | Read more
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 | By John Foust, Advertising Trainer
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| The Thin Market’s impact on advertising
The Thin Market is one of the best arguments for running ads consistently.
If I were to ask if you are planning to buy a pair of shoes for yourself or someone in your family in the next year, you would probably say “yes.” But if I were to ask if you are planning to buy that pair of shoes this week, you’d probably say “no.” That means your chance of buying those shoes right now is one chance out of 52 weeks.
This phenomenon is called the Thin Market – something every advertiser should know. For most products or services, there is a large market over an extended period of time and a small market on any given day. In other words, store owners have to advertise year round to reach all of their prospective customers. During each week they advertise, they reach only about two percent of their current prospects. In addition, we all know that an ad has to be seen multiple times to stand a chance of being acted upon. Running one ad a year – or two or three or ten – will not make much of an impact.
Marketing’s dried up lakebeds are filled with decision makers who advertised only “every now and then.” But what about business people who resist advertising altogether? Read more
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