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Your connection to industry & member news | Sept. 3, 2026
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File your USPS postal statement by Oct. 1
- Oct. 10 for publications issued more frequently than weekly
- Oct. 31 for publications issued weekly or less frequently but more frequently than monthly
- First issue produced after Oct. 1 for monthly publications
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|  SCPA members: Pencil in Sept. 24 from 2-3 p.m. for a free Zoom panel discussion on writing for impact! This event, co-hosted with SC Investigates and sponsored by the A-Mark Foundation, will feature the Palmetto State's A-Mark Prize for Investigative Journalism winners, Tony Bartelme, Zak Koeske and Glenn Smith. Gina Smith, director of SC Investigates will moderate. This event is only open to SCPA members. RSVP if you'd like to attend.
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South Carolina charter schools fall short of state’s new transparency laws
The vast majority of South Carolina public charter schools are coming up short on a new state law requiring they post a raft of key financial and governing documents to their websites, a Post and Courier review has found.
Nearly four months ago, South Carolina lawmakers passed sweeping legislation that compelled the state’s charter schools to meet many of the same online transparency standards that traditional public schools have been subject to for more than a decade. The law — South Carolina’s Charter School Accountability Act, also known as Act 123 — took years to pass, even as oversight gaps resulted in multiple lawsuits and state investigations.
Getting schools to comply will be the next challenge.
“All stewards of public funds should be held to the same standards of transparency and reporting,” wrote David Prentice, the head of finance for the Charleston County School District — whose 88 public schools include eight charters.
On Aug. 24 and 25, with the 2026-27 school year well under way, the newspaper reviewed the websites of 105 charter schools for the presence of items required under Act 123 as well as transparency provisions of the state’s updated education statute and Freedom of Information Act.
Specifically, the newspaper looked for a school’s current budget, audit and monthly check register, required under Act 123, as well as board meeting agendas and recordings required under other state transparency laws. These items are among dozens of documents that statewide authorizers — The Charter Institute at Erskine and the South Carolina Public Charter School District — as well as the Charleston County School District have told schools they must post.
By Anna B. Mitchell, The Post and Courier | Read more
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Blythewood’s new FOI policy allows charges up to $86 per hour
After two failed attempts in the last three months to adopt a new Freedom of Information policy that Media Attorney Jay Bender said included a number of provisions inconsistent with state law, Blythewood Town Council unanimously passed a resolution Monday night adopting a revised policy that would allow the Town to charge citizens as much as $86 per hour for a response to an FOI request.
That amount is down from the $225 per hour Town Attorney Pete Balthazor proposed for the town attorney to review FOI records before release, even though such a charge for attorney review is not authorized under the state’s FOI Act.
Town Manager Doug Polen revised much of Balthazor’s initial proposals. However, several requirements remain in the revised version of the policy passed by council Monday night that do not appear to comply with state law.
The law requires governments to publish a schedule of fees that will be charged those persons submitting FOI requests. According to state law 30-4-30(B), “The public body shall develop a fee schedule to be posted online. The fee for the search, retrieval, or redaction of records shall not exceed the prorated hourly salary of the lowest paid employee who, in the reasonable discretion of the custodian of the records, has the necessary skill and training to perform the request.
The Town’s revised policy does not provide such a fee schedule. The only specific fee it lists is the cost per page ($0.25) for hard copies of records. The charge for staff time to search, retrieve, or redact records per hour is “TBD,” not a specific amount as required by state law.
The Town takes that a step further by charging an additional fee for an attendant [employee] to observe the FOI requestor as he/she reviews the documents requested. That charge exceeds what state law authorizes.
By Barbara Ball, The Voice of Blythewood | Read more
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ACLU can share execution records already made public, SC Supreme Court says
COLUMBIA — A civil rights group can’t face punishment for releasing certain information about the execution process, the state Supreme Court said Wednesday.
The opinion from the state’s highest court answered questions that arose as part of a broader legal challenge to a secrecy law meant to keep most information about executions confidential, including who carries them out and where the lethal drugs come from.
That federal lawsuit is ongoing. The judge in that case will have to decide whether the Supreme Court’s decision ends the challenge altogether, as the attorney general’s office has said, or if other parts of it may continue, as lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union said.
The case was a rare one in which both sides agreed anyone sharing information that’s already publicly available shouldn’t face punishment.
At odds was whether the law explicitly protected that information or if sharing anything about the death penalty, including widely available information, might lead to a lawsuit or arrest.
As part of the federal challenge, the ACLU argued the law, especially as expanded in 2023, barred the release of information already made public in other ways.
By Skylar Laird, SC Daily Gazette | Read more
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California bill to curb CIPA lawsuit abuse passes legislature, NMA member advocacy critical to passage
On Aug. 28, both the California Assembly and California Senate overwhelmingly passed SB 690, a bill that would amend the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) to provide relief for news publishers targeted by unreasonable lawsuits based on the current text of the law.
While the amended measure was modified from its initial scope, SB-690 will provide much needed relief to small businesses and news publishers facing lawsuits and arbitration demands for the use of expected and widely-used online tools.
News/Media Alliance member engagement was a key factor in the passage of SB 690, with Los Angeles Times’s President and Chief Operating Officer Chris Argentieri and General Counsel, Jeff Glasser, both providing lead testimony on the disproportionate impact of these suits on publishers.
The bill will now be presented to California Governor Gavin Newsom for signature, and the Alliance strongly urges the Governor’s signature on this measure.
From News/Media Alliance | Read more
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Reporting on US education: The story of American education is local
When CalMatters education reporter Carolyn Jones traveled to Humboldt County in Northern California to report on tiny rural school districts confronting declining enrollment, she encountered a question that went well beyond enrollment figures and school budgets.
In some communities, the school was inseparable from the town itself. “If the school closed, the town would essentially have no reason for being, and residents knew that,” Jones said. But keeping a sparsely populated school operating carries its own consequences. Jones discovered annual costs topping $100,000 per student, raising a difficult question: How much should preserving a school, and perhaps the community surrounding it, cost?
“School closures are a national story, but I hadn't seen many stories about the impacts in rural areas,” Jones said. The experience taught her “how a school can be the very soul and identity of a community.”
It is also an example of the challenge confronting education journalists when some of the biggest forces reshaping American public education are simultaneously national and intensely local. Declining enrollment, aging buildings, uneven school funding, artificial intelligence and changes in who makes decisions about schools can affect millions of children. But their consequences often become clearest far from Washington, in a district budget, school board meeting, classroom or community fighting to keep its school open.
“There are huge regional differences when it comes to how much states and communities pay for public education and as a result, how teachers are paid,” said Bianca Vázquez Toness, a national education reporter for The Associated Press.
She also points to differences in class sizes, students’ ability to attend schools outside their communities and access to public funding for private education. Where a child lives can substantially shape the education that child receives, and the stories journalists need to tell.
By Taayoo Murray for E&P Magazine | Read more
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Lie to me
Artificial intelligence is really something. It can create mostly realistic videos and images, a number one hit song was written and performed entirely by AI recently and it can seemingly provide the answer to almost any question you have.
It is now becoming commonplace for people to end online arguments by saying “Well, I asked AI and it said blah blah whatever.” It can certainly be a useful tool, but there is a dark side to it as well. If you doubt that, just ask no less an authority on that matter than AI itself and it will mention psychological and personal harm to vulnerable users, system and database damage, cognitive and social decline and misinformation output.
That last one is especially applicable as it relates to us. You may remember that several weeks ago, we had an exclusive story about a developer having eyed a Great Falls location as the site of a potential data center. At that point (the site was considered last year), data centers were a bit more under the radar, but now they are a hot topic all over the country. Overwhelmingly, people seem not to want them in their community. They point to power and water use, the relatively small number of jobs they create and the massive amount of space they occupy. There are proponents that argue the more modern versions of the facilities use less water, often generate their own electricity and produce huge tax revenue. Chester County has put a six-month moratorium on the facilities along with zoning restrictions and other safeguards on noise, light, setbacks and buffers.
In this case, though, what you or we and anyone thinks about them is kind of irrelevant. We wrote a story based on emails we viewed through a Freedom of Information Act request. Chester County Economic Development reached out to Great Falls to set up a meeting on the topic, potential sewer arrangements were discussed and that was all that was present in the emails. Planning Director Jeremy Ward filled in the blanks for us, telling us that the project did not materialize.
So, imagine our surprise when we found a story with the headline “Data Center eyed potential Great Falls site” on the Town of Great Falls website. At first, we thought it was just a link to our story since that was the headline we used, but it wasn’t. First of all, despite the headline indicating the consideration was past tense, this story started by saying Great Falls “is being considered as a potential location for a new data center.” Then came the PR/propaganda quality body of the story.
From The News & Reporter | Read more
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