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Your connection to industry & member news | May 7, 2026
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Last call to sign up for business reporting roundtableReporters and editors who regularly cover business and growth and development beat topics are invited to join their peers for a Business Beat Reporting Roundtable on Friday, May 15, from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., at SCPA Offices in Columbia.
This event, sponsored by the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications Baldwin Business and Financial Journalism Endowment Fund, will be moderated by Baldwin Business Faculty Fellow Parks Rogers.
This will be an informal space to share ideas and collaborate. Journalists who cover local and state businesses or growth and development issues are welcome to attend.
Topics are up to the group but may include: story/series ideas, building trust with sources, storytelling with data, resources, challenges you face on the beat and more. We’ll also allow time for open discussion.
Please submit discussion topics, ideas and specific questions on the registration form.
The cost to attend is $30, which includes a boxed lunch.
Friday is the final day to register.
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SCBIZ names Zach Giroux editor
Zach Giroux has joined SCBIZ as editor, following over 10 years leading editorial teams and producing award-winning journalism content.
As editor, Giroux will continue to develop the SCBIZ brand that launched last November, incorporating three regional B2B journalism brands into one statewide brand. Giroux will ensure that SCBIZ continues to provide strong local coverage of the Upstate, Midlands and Lowcountry regions while expanding the brand’s statewide coverage.
“We are excited that Zach has joined the SCBIZ team,” said Suzanne Fischer-Huettner, managing director of BridgeTower Media. “Zach’s leadership experience, editorial vision and previous success creating valuable digital and print products targeted to niche readers will drive SCBIZ’s overall goals and help elevate this brand to even greater success.”
Giroux is responsible for guiding the editorial vision for SCBIZ, as well as leading the development of SC500 — the premier recognition program that debuted in December to celebrate the most influential and accomplished professionals throughout the Palmetto State — and SCBIZ’s other recognition and thought leadership programs.
“Our mission isn’t just to report on businesses news — it’s to serve as a trusted source for movers and shakers of all sizes across our state,” Giroux said. “I’m honored to uphold that golden standard of excellence at SCBIZ.”
Most recently, Giroux worked as copyeditor and managing editor for Charleston Women Magazine, Island Vibes Newspaper and Mount Pleasant Magazine. Prior to those roles, he also was a general assignment reporter turned editor for the Daniel Island News as well as a freelance editor for The Island Eye News and The Island Connection.
By Hollie Moore, SCBIZ | Read more
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 | The April 29 edition of Free Times and the Post and Courier Columbia pages that ran inside.
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| Editor’s Column: Decade after merger, P&C and Free Times are 2 great flavors that go great together
By Jordan Lawrence, The Post and Courier/Free Times
I once had a hard time explaining what my job had been at Free Times.
Before a winding journey through other Midlands newspaper jobs that brought me back to The Post and Courier Columbia newsroom as its top editor, I put in two years as the editor of Free Times.
The first of those was the publication’s last as a proper alt-weekly — covering Columbia from a multifaceted counter-culture perspective that spanned arts and entertainment, state and local government, growth and development, and various odd points around and in between. We would have a cover story about why all-ages shows were vital to the local music scene one week and a deep dive into how being the state capital impacts Columbia as a city the next.
My second year leading Free Times was the publication’s first as an insert into The Post and Courier Columbia print edition. The paper’s hard news efforts were changed to that of a mainstream newspaper, in line with the award-winning work the Charleston Post and Courier has done for years and years. And the arts and culture and entertainment coverage was separated out as the reconstituted Free Times — the “party in the back” to the Post and Courier Columbia’s “business in the front.”
So what are we now?
It’s a question I’ve been pondering with renewed intensity as the calendar turns to May 2026, the 10-year anniversary of The Post and Courier announcing its purchase of Free Times and starting the Columbia newsroom down a path of reinvention and refinement that resulted in Free Times relaunching as a standalone print product last year. The paper once more takes a broader, newsier approach to the “culture” mandate of its arts and food and culture mission — how artists are handling their craft in the Trump era, local skate shops launching their own Nike sneakers, and the impact of increasing liquor liability costs on Columbia bars and restaurants are once again the paper’s purview. Read more
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|  Earlier this week, Carolina Reporter students showcased the journalism they created this semester at the USC School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Special thanks to instructors Eileen Waddell and Renée Ittner-McManus for their dedication to helping students grow their skills, craft and confidence! Best wishes to Waddell on her retirement! From left: USC students (all active SCPA collegiate members and award winners) Colin Elam, Miles Shea, CJ Leathers, instructor Eileen Waddell, Sydney Lewis and instructor Renée Ittner-McManus.
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Columbia, Richland Co. hold potentially illegal closed-door meeting to discuss joint Fire Department
COLUMBIA — After cutting short the first meeting of Columbia and Richland County’s Fire Advisory Committee meeting in three years, Fire Chief Aubrey Jenkins, who chairs the committee, opted to meet with city and county council members behind closed doors at a follow-up meeting on April 29.
A week prior, representatives from both councils sat down at a public meeting with the chief to discuss what were described as long-overdue updates to the fire department. Though their intergovernmental agreement notes that the committee must meet quarterly, they hadn’t met in years. As far back as 2023, a report noted that those meetings had not been regular.
On the April 22 agenda: updates about staffing, facilities, and EMS/Fire efficient modeling, as well as an executive session for “Discussion of negotiations incident to proposed contractual arrangements, City-county intergovernmental agreement."
In that first update, a deputy chief shared that the fire department has not added more employees since 2015, and now requires 135 more firefighters to match population growth.
What was discussed behind closed doors?
After fielding tough questions from the council members during his staffing update, many of which he could not provide immediate answers to, the chief elected to jump into executive session. After coming out of the private meeting an hour later, Jenkins promised those other topics they skipped, including facilities updates, would be addressed at the next meeting.
Just days before that first meeting, The Post and Courier reported that the department systematically ignored firemen’s maintenance requests at their houses, including reports of mold, pest infestations, broken air conditioning, sewer back-ups, and plumbing leaks. The department still has not publicly responded to the report.
When the agenda came out for that next meeting, scheduled for the morning of April 29, there was only one item listed:
“Executive session: Discussion of negotiations incident to proposed contractual arrangements … Budgetary requirements related to the Intergovernmental Fire Agreement.”
By Chloe Barlow, The Post and Courier Columbia | Read more
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Judge rules SC podcaster Matney ‘disobeyed’ court order and can be held in contempt
South Carolina podcaster Mandy Matney “disobeyed” a subpoena and a court order, a state circuit judge ruled [April 30].
In his ruling, Judge R. Keith Kelly ordered Matney to appear in York County at the county courthouse May 15 to “show cause, if she can, as to why she should not be held in contempt of court for willfully failing to comply with the duly issued subpoena” and a court order to sit for a deposition.
Punishments for being held in contempt of court order can range from fines to paying opposing attorneys’ fees and even jail, although confinement in a case like this would be unlikely.
By John Monk, The State | Read more
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News/Media Alliance calls on the Copyright Office to withdraw proposal for massive registration fee hike for news publishers
On May 4, News/Media Alliance filed comments with the U.S. Copyright Office objecting to the Office’s proposed fee hike for the Group Registration of Updates to a News Website (GRNW) option that allows publishers to easily register online content. The Office’s fee study proposes a 3.5-fold price increase for the application, from $95 to $350.
NMA’s submission was joined by forty-nine press associations and included letters from 30 state press associations [including SCPA] and individual publishers. The comments as well as the letters highlighted especially small and local publishers’ difficulty of absorbing additional costs while keeping their communities informed and investing in high-quality journalism. Given the economic evidence of price sensitivity, a large registration fee increase is likely to significantly depress news registration practices. To avoid outcomes that are unfair or inequitable in light of the “objectives of the copyright system,” the comments call for freezing the proposed GRNW fee increase, striking the inefficient content-based limitation in GRNW, and reducing the amount of indirect costs credited to registration-fees. Read the full comments here.
If you'd like to learn more abut the benefits of copyright registration, registration options, the registration process and third-party vendors, please reach out to SCPA.
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