Several SCPA members chosen as
EPSCoR/IDeA Science Journalism Fellows
3/10/10
SC EPSCoR/IDeA (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research and Institutional Development Awards) has selected ten science journalism fellows -- mostly from S.C. newspapers -- to help educate the public and fellow journalists about stem cell research and other important science issues affecting the Palmetto State.

A committee of scholars and practitioners chose Jen Barclay, S.C. Press Association; James Denton, The Herald Independent; Michael Harrison, Fort Mill Times; Diane Knich, The Post and Courier; Bradrick McClam, Lake City News and Post; Lisa Chalian-Rock, The Messenger; Douglas Rogers, Holly Hill Observer; and Bill West, The Lexington County Chronicle and The Dispatch News, to be a part of the 2010 EPSCor Science Journalism Fellowship class. Broadcasters Debi Chard, WCSC TV; and Landon Sears, WBTW TV; were also selected.

“We are pleased that the fellows are from media outlets from across South Carolina who are working in various facets including print, television, on-line and new media.  This is a real opportunity to help educate the public about stem cell research,” said Dr. Sohya Duhé, Director of the workshop.

The Science Journalism Fellows Program is part of a $20 million National Science Foundation award to South Carolina’s institutions of higher education.  The South Carolina Project for Organ Biofabrication was funded to establish a statewide alliance in the field of tissue biofabrication, which could lead to the production of human organs.  Dr. Scott Little, Director of the SC EPSCoR/IDeA State Office says, “This educational component of the award is truly innovative and expected to enhance science literacy statewide.”  “We are excited about the opportunity to train journalists to become even better science reporters,” says Little.  “We hope, in turn, this will help educate the public.”

Fellows will receive a $1,000 stipend and attend a two-day workshop in Columbia, S.C. with scientists, scholars, and science journalists. The topic for this year’s workshop is “Stem Cell Research.”  Fellows will also learn about the ethical challenges surrounding stem cell research and get hands-on experience on reporting science.

The National Science Foundation, SC EPSCoR/IDeA, the S.C. Press Association, the S.C. Broadcasters Association, the University of South Carolina Media Services, and Loyola University, New Orleans School of Mass Communication are sponsoring the workshop. 

For more information on the program, contact Dr. Sonya Duhé at (504) 284-8031 or
Dr. Scott Little at (803) 733-9060.

Next week, SCPA member newspapers will also have free access to Jen Barclay's stories, photos, multimedia, resources and other important information on South Carolina's ground-breaking EPSCoR projects (did you know S.C. is leading the country in bioprinting?). All content will be available for SCPA members on our news content sharing site, www.SCNewsExchange.com. Jen will also be sharing her notes and tips/resources on covering the science beat. She'd be happy to discuss and share what she learned at the training session. E-mail jbarclay@scpress.org if you are interested.

Online predicted to pass print advertising this year
3/10/10
By Marc Wilson
TownNews.com
A major watershed has been reached (according to one forecaster): For the first time ever, more money will be spent this year on digital advertising than on print advertising.

 Outsell Research released results of a survey of major advertisers showing that 32.5 percent of advertising dollars will be spent this year on digital – compared with 30.3 percent for print.

 Outsell had earlier predicted that online advertising would surpass print advertising in 2013 or 2014. The company revised its forecast, in part, because of the continuing struggles of print newspapers.

 The digital category includes online publications, video, search engine keywords and email marketing.

 The study, at least to my thinking, shows that newspapers need to be careful about how they limit access to content on their Web sites. If publishers become too restrictive, they will limit their potential in the highest growing revenue categories.

 The old shovelware solution of simply moving print content from print to Web (reading the newspaper over the radio) needs to die. That solution doesn’t help the print product, nor does it create dynamic online products.

 Instead of trying to share one set of content (the print newspapers’ traditional news and advertising), publishers need to think of their online products as separate – and needing different content.

A publisher friend told me the story of his predecessor who returned from World War I and bought the local AM radio station. For content, the publisher simply read the printed newspaper over the radio station. It took a while, but the World War I-era publisher finally figured out that radio is not an electronic newspaper. Instead it is a medium with a separate set of strengths and weaknesses.

When the station started playing music – eureka! – the new medium caught the fancy of area residents. Sure the radio station did some news and some public service programming (and competed for local advertising), but the newspaper and radio station learned to live in harmony.

Just like the radio station, newspaper Web sites need separate identities and content. I think special emphasis needs to be placed on content that can’t be published in print – video, audio, user-generated content (commenting and blogs), links to social network sites, polls, interactive business directories, syndication and aggregation of other content on the Internet, etc.

Publish on the Web what you can’t publish in print because of space limitations: Multiple photos from news and sporting events; sermons from local ministers, priest and rabbis (maybe even podcasts); full text of speeches; press releases; full details of weddings, anniversaries, family reunions; videos of prettiest gardens, ugliest pet, cutest baby, etc.; videos from local bands and other performers (link to your interactive calendar).

Go into competition with the local TV station(s) by posting videos of breaking news and other local events. Do video interviews with local coaches and players. Do video features on new or remodeled local businesses, chamber leaders, and civic events, etc. Video cameras are inexpensive, editing software relatively simple – and you don’t have to demand world class results from your staff or user-generated video (your audience will like a touch of hometown flavor).

Add a Web cam or two that shows (for example) traffic backups at regular trouble spots, or river flooding levels, or just show folks walking on Main Street.

Promote the online product in print, and the print product online. Train your sales staff to sell online-only products, print-only products, and bundled products. Make sure your merchants and readers know you are the No. 1 source of online and print media.

Digital advertising will likely continue to grow in relation to print revenues (which will never go away). Community publishers need to own the two best media properties in the trade area – the printed newspaper and the online newspaper.

Newspapers publishers need to have excellent Web products because – in the famous words of bank robber Willie Sutton – “that’s where the money is.”

(Marc Wilson is general manager of TownNews.com. He’s reachable at marcus@townnews.com.)

FOI request shows N. Myrtle Beach paying to forward calls to suspended worker's private phone
3/8/10
The Sun News
By David Wren
NORTH MYRTLE BEACH -- This city continues to pay for a cell phone that automatically transfers calls to William Bailey's private telephone number, even though he has been suspended for more than two months.

Telephone records obtained by The Sun News show Bailey has received nearly 200 telephone calls on his official city phone since he was suspended on Dec. 30 for lying about a crime.

Those telephone conversations have lasted nearly 23 hours, the records show. It is impossible to tell who is calling Bailey or why, however, because Bailey last year programmed his city-issued cell phone to transfer all calls to a private number.

The monthly invoice the city receives does not show incoming phone numbers. It only shows that calls to the city number are being transferred to Bailey's private phone and the duration of those calls.

"The records I sent you for [Bailey's city phone] are the only records for that number," city spokeswoman Nicole Aiello told The Sun News last week.

Bailey purchased the private cell phone last year after The Sun News obtained his city cell phone records under terms of the S.C. Freedom of Information Act.

The phone records at that time showed, among other things, that Bailey misled the public about the sequence of events that occurred on the day a wildfire swept through Barefoot Resort and destroyed 75 homes.

"It's clear he is transferring calls to a private number to avoid any public scrutiny," said Jay Bender, a Columbia lawyer and expert of the state's Freedom of Information Act.

Bender said the government's business should be conducted openly, but transferring calls from a city cell phone to a private number defeats that purpose.

Bailey did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Bender questioned why Bailey would be receiving business-related telephone calls while he is on suspension.

"If he's not performing any duties, why is the city paying his phone bill?" Bender asked. "And if these are personal calls, he should be paying for them."

City Manager John Smithson did not respond to questions asking whether Bailey continues to conduct city business while on leave and how the city would know one way or the other since there is no record of who is calling Bailey's city-issued cell phone.

The city pays between $46 and $49 per month - or more than $550 per year - for the city phone that Bailey uses to transfer calls.

"Although Mr. Bailey did buy and is using his own cell phone, the city thought it was important to maintain that number for the time being because so many people were accustomed to contacting him on that number," Aiello said.

Ron Busick, president of the North Myrtle Beach Citizens' Association, said Smithson should rethink the decision to let Bailey transfer what should be city-related calls to his personal phone while he is on suspension.

"I can understand them wanting to keep that phone number, but Bailey shouldn't have usage of it if he is on leave," Busick said.

Aiello said the city does not know when Bailey started transferring calls from his city-issued cell phone to his private number. Telephone records obtained by The Sun News show 185 phone calls were transferred from Bailey's city-issued phone to his private number between Dec. 31 and Feb. 18.

The duration of each call ranges from one minute to 122 minutes.

The city does not have a policy on whether its employees must use city-issued cell phones, Aiello said.

"As long as the city has knowledge of the staff member's phone number and as long as the staff member can be reached, it does not matter whether the cell phone is city-issued or personal," she said.

Aiello said the city is not attempting to circumvent the state's Freedom of Information Act by allowing Bailey to transfer calls from a city-issued cell phone to a private number.

"The city does not require an explanation for any city staff members who wish to use their personal phone, so we do not know their reasoning for switching to personal cell phones," she said.

The city initially refused The Sun News' request for the records of Bailey's city-issued cell phone.

Aiello said on Feb. 16 that the city does not maintain such records. The city later agreed to provide the information after The Sun News pointed out that such detailed records had been provided in the past.

"While the city does not maintain detailed phone call records because of the amount of paper this takes, the city can obtain those records from our phone provider," Aiello said.

Bailey was suspended with pay after reporting the theft of a department-issued gun from the glove box of his truck.

He at first told investigators the glove box was locked, but an investigation by The Sun News showed his truck model does not have a locking glove box.

Since Bailey's suspension, at least three police officers have been fired or forced to resign in the wake of a scandal within the public safety department. That scandal was sparked by a series of secretly recorded conversations that describe Bailey and others making police decisions based on political alliances, officers afraid to report misconduct for fear of reprisal, and officers making vulgar sexual comments about female co-workers and crime victims.

In addition to Bailey's suspension, the former public safety director has been demoted to lieutenant and his pay has been cut from $97,330 per year to $58,000 per year.

"Transparency is the key to honesty," said Mike Ragusa, a Barefoot Resort resident who has been critical of the city's response to the April wildfire. "Why would public officials ever go from city phones to personal phones?"

The citizens' association has scheduled a public forum for 7:30 p.m. on March 18 so residents can discuss problems within the public safety department and other city-related issues. The forum will be held at the J. Bryan Floyd Community Center at 1030 Possum Trot Road.

Bailey will remain on leave until the State Law Enforcement Division decides whether it will investigate allegations that he covered up a criminal domestic violence case involving the daughter of one of Mayor Marilyn Hatley's top political supporters.

The city asked SLED to investigate the allegations on Jan. 14.

Smithson told The Sun News in February that SLED had visited city hall and obtained some documents, but the state agency still is reviewing whether a formal investigation will take place.

Bailey will mark his 20th anniversary with the city on April 30.

The city continues to pay 100 percent of the health insurance premiums for employees who retire with at least 20 years of service. Those premiums are paid until the retired employee qualifies for Medicare.

The conversations that sparked the scandal within the public safety department were secretly recorded over a two-year period by former police Lt. Randy Fisher.

It is legal in South Carolina to record conversations as long as at least one party knows the recording is taking place.

Fisher was forced to resign in November after city officials accused him of giving confidential information about an April wildfire to Ragusa. Fisher has said he did not give the resident confidential information. Fisher said he was fired because he complained about unethical behavior by Bailey and others.

Big changes underway at The Herald
3/8/10
By Larry Timbs
Special to SCPA
Despite an announcement in late January that the McClatchy Co.-owned Herald in Rock Hill was cutting seven positions and outsourcing some newsroom and business operations with its nearby sister McClatchy Co. daily paper, The Charlotte Observer, Herald news decisions and Herald news reporting will still occur in Rock Hill.

That’s according to Herald editor Paul Osmundson, who emphasized McClatchy’s strong commitment to local news.

“A lot of decisions made by McClatchy (in an era of soft ad revenues for newspapers) are designed to protect as much as possible local news,” said Osmundson, editor of The Herald for the past three years.

Osmundson is not happy with reductions in The Herald’s newsroom staff, but he is confident that the latest changes will allow the 34,000-daily circulation daily to operate more efficiently, while still offering the public an outstanding news product—in print and online. Although declining to disclose a dollar amount in savings, Osmundson said the changes will make enough of a difference to be worthwhile. “…We wouldn’t have done it (made the changes), if it would not have been enough to make a difference, ” Osmundson wrote in an email message.

He emphasized that though some copyediting and design positions at The Herald were being outsourced to Charlotte (about 25 miles north of Rock Hill) the paper’s news agenda and reporting would be determined in Rock Hill.

“The product of the paper (The Herald) is physically going to be done in Charlotte,” Osmundson said, “but the decisions about the stories that we are going to pursue and how we’re going to pursue them will be made here in Rock Hill—ultimately by me. We’re going to decide what stories will go not only on the front page, but on A2 or A3, and on all the pages (of The Herald).”

Osmundson noted that because The Herald and the Charlotte Observer share the same computer technology or software, it will be easy to see—from Rock Hill-- Herald pages as they are being designed in Charlotte. Page design and copyediting decisions that had been made in Rock Hill will now be done in close consultation, by phone or by computer, with newsroom staffers at The Charlotte Observer.

“I think the paper (The Herald) itself will see no changes in content or direction or anything like that,” Osmundson said. “We’ll still be making the decisions on news here (in Rock Hill). . . The number one priority that you have in these decisions is how you can best protect the gathering of local news for the paper and online.”

Osmundson’s boss, Herald publisher Debbie Abels, said recently in an interview that the newsroom changes at The Herald were necessary to save money in an era when newspapers are coping with the effects of a lingering recession. She noted that even though some page design and copy editing positions for The Herald’s news, sports and features sections are being moved to Charlotte, Herald readers will get continued journalistic excellence from their hometown newspaper in Rock Hill.

“When readers pick up a Herald in the morning, it shouldn’t feel different to them,” Abels said in that interview (which occurred in a Herald story about the newsroom changes a few weeks ago.)

Changes at The Herald in recent months have included employees absorbing pay cuts of from 2.5 percent to 10 percent and the newspaper itself being no longer printed in Rock Hill on The Herald’s aging presses. Printing operations for The Herald moved to Charlotte in 2009, with Herald pressroom employees offered severance packages, retirement or opportunities in Charlotte.

The Charlotte Observer, too, hasn’t been spared pain. In late January, for example, the 250,000-circulation daily announced the latest in a series of money-saving changes; 25 full-time Observer employees, among them 11 newsroom staffers, lost their jobs.

Old Man Wayne Patrick: Rolling Over In His Grave?

Wayne Patrick, past president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, was for many years the owner and publisher of The Herald, known until 1986 as the Evening Herald.

In 1985, the News & Observer Co. of Raleigh, N.C., bought the paper from the Patrick family; in 1990, the McClatchy Co., now the country’s third largest newspaper company, bought The Herald and three of its sister community papers—The Yorkville Enquirer, The Clover Herald and the Lake Wylie Magazine.

Patrick, known for his lifelong commitment to journalism and for his community philanthropy, prided himself on producing one of the best daily newspapers in South Carolina.

Patrick’s Herald fought tooth and nail against the Charlotte Observer for the then highly lucrative newspaper advertising and circulation market in Rock Hill and York County, S.C. In the mid-1980s, for example, York County, S.C., was home to the fiercest newspaper competition (between The Herald and the Charlotte Observer) in South Carolina—and maybe even in the southeastern United States.

Patrick, publisher of The Herald from 1970-1993, died at age 66 in 2001. He didn’t live to see the now close collaboration between his Herald and its one-time arch enemy competitor, The Charlotte Observer.

Is he rolling over in his grave?

That’s not a legitimate question, according to retired Herald editor Terry Plumb, who headed The Herald’s newsroom for more than two decades, including at one juncture when it had 45 employees. (The size of that newsroom staff was probably bigger than most newspapers of the Herald’s size, because of the competitive situation in York County, Plumb noted.)

Plumb scoffed at the “rolling over in his grave” question:

“Whatever was said or done at the time then, the circumstances now are dramatically different,” said Plumb, who retired from The Herald three and one-half years ago and now works in PR for the U.S. Census in Charlotte. “Wayne loved the paper and he did a lot for the paper, but the time came when he sold the paper.”

Plumb, who worked 40 years professionally in journalism, said newspapers are doing just about anything they can do to survive in highly challenging economic times, and The Herald is no exception.

“It’s obviously a difficult time,” he said. “No one wants to see anyone lose their job in this business. . . There are newspapers that are having their pages laid out in foreign countries, and that’s hard to accept, but it’s not unlike what is happening in a lot of other fields as well. . .

“I hate to see it (the reductions in newsroom staff at The Herald), but hopefully this will allow them to keep operating for a long time.”

Herald Newsroom Changes Result In Departure Of Award-winning Sports Editor

Much of the talk in Rock Hill about the employee cutbacks at the town’s community newspaper has focused on Herald sports editor Gary McCann.

McCann, 61, is one of only about 50 people in the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame (voted to that honor last year by his peers.)

He is the winner of numerous awards for his writing over a 40-year career in journalism, covered 17 Final Fours in basketball and won the respect of prickly, legendary Indiana University basketball head coach Bobby Knight.

But given the choice by McClatchy recently of whether he wanted to work second shift as an assistant sports editor at the Charlotte Observer or retire, with a severance package, McCann opted for the latter.

How do you replace a Gary McCann at The Herald?

You don’t, according to Osmundson and many others in Rock Hill, who credit McCann with helping put the Winthrop University men’s basketball team on the national radar scope.

“It’s hard to replace a hall of famer,” Herald editor Osmundson said. “You’re losing a hall of fame sports writer who has the respect of Bobby Knight. Gary is great. He knows the game and can report the game. . . Talk about hard work. We’re losing that knowledge and insight. We’ll certainly miss that at The Herald.”

McCann came to The Herald in 1998, after pulling stints in sports journalism at newspapers in Burlington, N.C., Greensboro, N.C., and Bloomington, Ind.

In Rock Hill, he became a brand for his sparkling coverage of the Winthrop University men’s basketball team, which won its first game in the Big Dance (the NCAA Tournament) a few years ago against Notre Dame. McCann was at that game to write about it, as well as at other “away” Winthrop men’s basketball games that year. He had convinced his superiors at The Herald that the Winthrop’s men’s team, then coached by Gregg Marshall (now the head coach at Wichita State University) would be very good and that it needed to be covered—at home and away.

“I went to my bosses the year Winthrop played Tennessee (in the NCAA tournament) and said this is going to be a really good basketball team. The Herald had never covered a Winthrop basketball team home and away. We did it, and that year, they beat Notre Dame…

“I wanted to cover the team because it’s college basketball, and it’s a sport I always loved,” said McCann, responding to the idea that many think he’s responsible for Winthrop getting nationally known. “If I made Winthrop basketball by what I thought was a good business decision, then so be it. I loved covering college basketball. I was fortunate that when Winthrop was the best it’s ever been (in 2007), I was there to cover it.”

McCann stressed that he was not forced to retire. He chose retirement instead of working in the Charlotte newsroom, he said, because he had worked second shift before (what he was offered to do in Charlotte) and he wasn’t going back to that; plus, his 17-year-old son, a senior at Rock Hill High School is on the baseball team, and second-shift work would cause him to miss most of his son’s games.

McCann, whose wife works at a sports marketing firm in Charlotte, says he’s comfortable with his decision to retire: “I don’t want anyone to think that the people who run The Herald said ‘You have to take this option or you’re gone.’ It’s kind of a byproduct of what the entire (newspaper) business is going through right now—trying to cut costs and keep the operation alive. I’m fortunate it happened when it did. . . My target age (for retiring) has always been 62. But I feel bad for the younger folks. . . and I hate it I’m not going to finish the season with the (Winthrop) basketball team.”

McCann’s leaving The Herald leaves a void at the newspaper, in the community and in Winthrop University basketball.

“It’s sad,” retired Herald editor Plumb said about McCann’s exit from the paper. “If I were the people at Winthrop, I’d be holding a funeral because Gary McCann has done so much to tell the story of the Winthrop basketball team.”

Likewise, Herald columnist and feature writer Andrew Dys wrote in a Jan. 24 Herald article that McCann leaves huge shoes to fill.

“Nobody in the country wrote about basketball better than McCann,” Dys opined. “He wrote about Earl “The Pearl” Monroe at Winston Salem State University in North Carolina in the 60s; about David Thompson in the 70s; Jim Valvano in the 80s; Christian Laettner in the 90s.

“…He came to The Herald and changed what Winthrop basketball meant to the city. It was no longer a niche sport in a small conference. Winthrop blossomed, and the fans went, in part, because McCann was the one who was doing much of the writing. He painted pictures of the games with words.”

Opinion: Secret meeting trampled law
3/5/10
The State
LEXINGTON TOWN Council members' disregard for the state's open meetings law is deplorable, and their cavalier attitude about the breech is even more offensive.

Council members trampled the law Monday when they met to discuss police plans to monitor the biker group Hell's Angels despite being warned that they were required to give the public a day's notice before holding a council meeting.

Council members' justification for the slight ring hollow: Mayor Randy Halfacre said he arranged the briefing "to give us an update" as council members gathered for a meal prior to their public meeting.

He said he doesn't see a violation because the meeting was informal.

And he doesn't remember being told it was improper.

Councilman Todd Shevchik also characterized the session as more of a briefing than a meeting and added that he doesn't know all the rules.

Ignorance is no excuse.

As elected officials chosen by voters to oversee the public's business, Mr. Shevchik and his fellow council members are obligated to find out what the law is and obey it.

And the fact that town attorney Brad Cunningham and administrator Jim Duckett say they told the council its actions were improper belies claims of ignorance.

Unlike the council members who broke the law, they have no reason to lie.

Mr. Duckett said he "told them they shouldn't, they couldn't do it" without abridging the state's open meetings law.

The fact that Messrs. Cunningham and Duckett would criticize the council speaks volumes about the egregious nature of the violation, and we commend them for being forthcoming.

All too often, staff remain silent or try to find a way to justify their councils' poor decisions.

This isn't about the subject of the meeting; it's about preserving the fundamental principle of open government.

If the council gets away with closing the public out even once, it's that much easier the next time. And the next. No public body has a right to assemble with a quorum present and even discuss public business - be it a briefing or a regular meeting - without notifying citizens of the time, date and place.

State law requires 24 hours notice of "any called, special or rescheduled meetings."

Lexington Town Council's wanton action further erodes the already-fragile trust the public has in government. The council not only owes its citizens an apology, but it should learn the law and obey it.

No excuses.

Newspapers will survive, says former Cox president
3/5/10
Anderson Independent-Mail
By Vince Jackson
CLEMSON — The former president of Atlanta-based Cox Newspapers says that after 40 years in the business he is convinced that print newspapers will survive and continue to be important.

Jay Smith talked about problems with newspaper publication Thursday as part of the Calhoun Lecture Series at Clemson University. About 200 students and community members listened to Smith.

The advent of around-the-clock news has dealt a blow to newspapers, Smith said.
“Many traditional print media may now be relegated to the Internet, but newspapers have been too quick to trumpet their own deaths in many cases,” he said.

Smith said newspapers have lost the ear of the American center, too often engaging in “uncivil discourse” about business and politics.

“Newspapers should be dealers in truth,” Smith said. “The majority of people in this country are centrists. Truth was once the domain of newspapers, but that required having the time to do the necessary research for a news story. That brand of journalism is rare today, but it can survive.”

Research conducted by The Pew Research Center for People and the Press in 2009 indicated that 83 percent of all news reports come from local reporters.

“When the economy went into decline, and newspapers begin to suffer, the first thing many publishers did was cut the budget in the newsroom,” Smith said.

Cutting the news-gathering ability of newspapers is a fatal mistake, he said. It is like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

“The newsroom is the key to print journalism’s recovery,” Smtih said. “Print newspapers still serve the needs of older, traditional readers. Those readers can help bridge the gap until the next wave of technology determines where newspapers are going in the future.”

Smith said he believes the following things are true about newspapers:

• Ad revenues will continue to suffer, especially classified ads.
• Newspapers must give readers what they want to read.
• News that cannot be found anywhere else is valuable. Local coverage is the salvation of small-town newspapers.
  
• News reporters are needed now more than ever. They will not become obsolete.
• News combines will become more popular, especially sports news. An example would be coverage of ACC schools at the local level, then combining that news with local stories from other conference schools to boost readership.
• Newspaper business models must change. Profit margins will be smaller. Internet services like Twitter and Google should be used to lead readers to in-depth stories only newspapers can provide.

Simply too important to fail
3/5/10
By Gene A. Budig
NNA
The newspaper has been a consistent ally of democracy in the United States for generations, often battling oppression.

It has made a documented difference by exposing wrongs in and threats to local, state and federal government, by serving as a courageous watchdog over growing crime and corruption in the country, and by being alert to the sometimes precarious international front.

On the editorial page, the newspaper has questioned the need for wars and the resulting loss of life, and it has been attentive to the readers’ need to know more, much more, about the daily news, business, entertainment and sports and how they impact them and their families.

It was an early champion of Civil Rights. It has devoted countless pages to the issues of health care, an emotionally charged matter that requires substantive understanding and constructive change.

As we know, America is in love with sports and the newspaper devotes a considerable amount of its space to the field of action, giving focus to and insight on the good and bad aspects of the games and the people associated with them.

The newspaper, with the support of the Associated Press, the world’s largest newsgathering organization, gives effective voice and information to the citizenry; it has immediate access to newsmakers around the globe.

The list could go on and on.

Still the daily newspaper and national news magazines face a stiff challenge if they are to continue to inform the nation adequately and to serve as the bastion of the written word.

The written word matters, especially in a large and complex world such as ours.

Knowledge matters.

In virtually every town and city, the newspaper has struck upon hard times and is in financial trouble, brought on by a seriously depressed economy and subsequent unemployment and new and aggressive competition from other forms of news and entertainment like the Internet and round the clock cable television.

Despite the doom and gloom, roughly the same number of people read newspapers today as before, but an alarming number of young people are bypassing newspapers for a quick fix on the news, however superficial.

They often seek out news summaries on the Internet or cable news or talk radio.

At times, their superficiality runs deep. Many do not see the need for thoughtful journalism and for detailed insight, the staples of a keen mind and a key to the continuance of democracy. They seem preoccupied with other things and display a short attention span.

Newspapers must reach out to the younger generation, finding creative ways to illustrate the importance of being an informed citizen; the younger generation needs to understand that with the benefits of a democracy come inescapable obligations.

One must remember that in every community the newspaper is the largest news gathering organization, and it is central to community life.

Unfortunately, some of America’s largest newspapers have been forced to shut down, papers like the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, while others are producing single-digit profits or none at all.

Fewer and fewer newspapers each year are producing profits that compare favorably with a variety of high profile businesses.

Too many people believe the problems with newspapers came with the advent of the Internet.

No so.

They started with unprecedented success. In the 1960s and 1970s when many afternoon newspapers in large cities went out of business, the surviving newspaper became a monopoly and a big money maker.

Most large newspapers created chains or joined them and expanded in many directions, clearly too many and too fast. The rapid change and subsequent profitability caught the eye of Wall Street and eager investors. Then came an era of cheap credit when major papers began to make multiple billion-dollar transactions.

Bigger is better, newspaper executives thought, and reasoned that synergies would drive down costs and drive up revenue. The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, McClatchy and Lee Enterprises were among those who got caught up in the madness.

All the while, newspapers dropped in classified advertising, especially in key areas like real estate, automotive and help wanted ads. Ad revenue fell 23 percent in 2008 alone. Newspapers lost advertisers and readers to an aggressive Internet.

Newspapers cannot give away the news they gather when advertising revenues are dangerously low. Someone has to shoulder the costs by finding news ways to monetize the content newspapers gather.

Too many good journalists have been sacrificed to balance the books, and it will take years for some newspapers to rebuild and again offer the quality that was once apparent. Even the New York Times Company has bonds that are rated as ”junk.”

The newspaper, a timeless guardian of the written word, is simply too important to fail, but it must move with dispatch to protect its aging reader base, bring back those who dropped subscriptions, and recruit the young in significant numbers.

Educators agree there is no substitute for the ability to read and write well among our young, and a great many of the teachers see the newspaper as an essential in the learning process.

Gene A. Budig is chairman of the News-Gazette Board of Directors in Champaign, IL, and a member of the National Commission on Writing. He was a former president/chancellor at three major state universities and now serves as a distinguished professor at the College Board in New York.

Post and Courier launches new magazine, Web site
3/5/10
CHARLESTON, SC – The Post and Courier may be the South’s oldest daily newspaper, but on March 11, it’s launching a new, hip weekly magazine and website that will cover all that makes Charleston one of the top destinations in the United States.

Charleston Scene will feature stories on the city’s thriving hub of creative artists and its one-of-a-kind culinary scene, along with music, local businesses, theater, movies and other entertainment. Charleston Scene replaces and expands on Preview, the newspaper’s weekly entertainment section that printed every Thursday.

The new product will be full-color, twice the size and have a host of innovative features. New to Charleston Scene will be party photos, reader write-ins, new columnists and more.

“Charleston Scene is geared toward a hip, new crowd that is making things happen in our city. It’s a very active community, and will be reflected in the magazine,” according to Marcus Amaker, Charleston Scene editor.

With the launch of Charleston Scene also comes a new web site – CharlestonScene.com – that will have a strong video component, as well as social media and streaming music. Charleston Scene will print every Thursday in The Post and Courier.

The magazine will also be distributed free in the community, to restaurants, bars and other venues. Connect with Charleston Scene online by becoming a fan on Facebook. Also follow Charleston Scene’s twitter feed at twitter.com/chasscene.

For more information visit www.charlestonscene.com, call 843-937-5706 or e-mail charlestonscene@gmail.com.

One third lack high speed internet
3/5/10
The Federal Communications Commission released its National Broadband Plan Consumer Survey, Broadband Adoption and Use in America, which found that affordability and lack of digital skills are the main reasons why 93 million Americans -- one-third of the country -- are not connected to high-speed Internet at home.

"We need to tackle the challenge of connecting 93 million Americans to our broadband future," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. "In the 21st century, a digital divide is an opportunity divide. To bolster American competitiveness abroad and create the jobs of the future here at home, we need to make sure that all Americans have the skills and means to fully participate in the digital economy."

On March 17, 2010, the Federal Communications Commission will deliver a National Broadband Plan to Congress that details a strategy for connecting the country to affordable broadband.

The FCC says the plan will be a strategy for U.S. global leadership in high-speed Internet to create jobs and spur economic growth; to unleash new waves of innovation and investment; and to improve education, health care, energy efficiency, and public safety.

As part of the plan, the FCC conducted a national random digit-dial survey of adults in October and November 2009 to assess America's attitudes toward broadband.

The Consumer Survey found that 35 percent of adult Americans do not have high-speed Internet connections at home -- or approximately 80 million adults and 13 million children over the age of five. The survey identifies three main barriers to adoption:

* Affordability: 36 percent of non-adopters (28 million adults) said they do not have home broadband because the monthly fee is too expensive (15 percent), they cannot afford a computer, the installation fee is too high (10 percent), or they do not want to enter into a long-term service contract (9 percent). According to survey respondents, their average monthly broadband bill is $41.

* Digital Literacy: 22 percent of non-adopters (17 million adults) indicated that they do not have home broadband because they lack the digital skills (12 percent) or they are concerned about potential hazards of online life, such as exposure to inappropriate content or security of personal information (10 percent).

* Relevance: 19 percent of non-adopters (15 million adults) said they do not have broadband because they say that the Internet is a waste of time, there is no online content of interest to them or, for dial-up users, they are content with their current service.

The survey also found that non-adopters usually have more than one barrier that keeps them from having broadband service at home. Over half of non-adopters, when selecting from a menu of possible barriers to adoption, chose three or more. For example, more than half of non-adopters who cited cost also listed reasons relating to digital literacy or relevance.

"The gap in broadband adoption is a problem with many different dimensions that will require many different solutions," said John Horrigan, Director of Consumer Research for the Omnibus Broadband Initiative. "Lowering costs of service or hardware, helping people develop online skills, and informing them about applications relevant to their lives are all key to sustainable adoption."

The interaction of attitudes and use of communications goods and services creates four categories of non-adopters:

* Near Converts, who make up 30 percent of non-adopters, have the strongest tendencies toward getting broadband. They have high rates of computer ownership, positive attitudes about the Internet. Many are dial-up or "not-at-home" users, and affordability is the leading reason for non-adoption among this group. They are relatively youthful compared with other non-adopters, with a median age of 45.

* Digital Hopefuls, who make up 22 percent of non-adopters, like the idea of being online but lack the resources for access. Few have a computer and, among those who use one, few feel comfortable with the technology. Some 44 percent cite affordability as a barrier to adoption and they are also more likely than average to say digital literacy are a barrier. This group is heavily Hispanic and has a high share of African-Americans.

* Digitally Uncomfortable, who make up 20 percent of non-adopters, are the mirror image of the Digital Hopefuls; they have the resources for access but not a bright outlook on what it means to be online. Nearly all of the Digitally Uncomfortable have computers, but they lack the skills to use them and have tepid attitudes toward the Internet. This group reports all three barriers: affordability, digital literacy, and relevance.

* Digitally Distant, who make up 28 percent of non-adopters, do not see the point of being online. Few in this group see the Internet as a tool for learning and most see it as a dangerous place for children. This is an older group (the median age is 63), nearly half are retired and half say that either relevance or digital literacy are barriers to adoption.

The Consumer Survey interviewed 5,005 adult Americans between Oct. 19 and Nov. 23, 2009. The margin of error based on results based on the entire sample is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points. The survey included an over-sample of non-adopters, resulting in interviews of 2,334 adults who are not broadband users at home. The margin of error for results based on non-adopters is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points. Interviewers conducting the survey provide a Spanish-language option for respondents wishing to take the survey in Spanish.

Read the Broadband Adoption and Use in America online.

Lexington held secret meeting on biker party
3/3/10
The State
By Tim Flach
Lexington Town Council proceeded with a session Monday on police plans to watch a biker group gathering after a warning from the town's top aide that it violated open meeting requirements.

Town attorney Brad Cunningham agreed the unannounced discussion didn't comply with state standards for a day's notice of topics to be discussed or acted upon.

"Once warned, I don't know what you can do," he said of the seven council members' decision to hold the meeting anyway.

Town administrator Jim Duckett confirmed warning council members the session was improper after he and Cunningham reviewed what is permissible under the "Sunshine Law."

"I told them they shouldn't, they couldn't do it," he said. "It was not announced in advance to the public and didn't meet the requirements allowing it to be done that way."

Police Chief Terrence Greene said during the meeting he outlined plans on how officers will handle a fundraiser for Hells Angels at a local bar Saturday.

Mayor Randy Halfacre said he arranged the briefing "to give us an update" as council members gathered for a meal prior to their public meeting.

Since it was informational, "I don't see that as a violation" of open-meeting requirements, Halfacre said.

Halfacre didn't remember being told the session was improper.

Some council members said any violation was inadvertent.

"I wouldn't call it a meeting; it was more of a briefing," Councilman Todd Shevchik said.

"I don't know what all the guidelines are," said Shevchik, a magazine publisher. "There was some mumbling and discussion as to whether it was appropriate."

Newspaper Web sites continue to be the most valued local news and information sites online
3/2/10
By Jeff Sigmund Direct
Newspaper Association of America
Arlington, Va. – Newspaper Web sites continue to be the most used and valued sites for consumers seeking credible and trustworthy local content and advertising online, according to a new survey conducted by comScore for the Newspaper Association of America. Approximately 57 percent of the 3,050 respondents identified local newspaper Web sites as the top online source for local information -- ahead of the totals for all other media. That percentage grows for upper income households (63 percent) and for the college educated (60 percent).

The strength of local newspaper Web sites was made clear when respondents to the survey, entitled Site Matters: The Value of Local Newspaper Web Sites, were asked to identify sites they used most often for specific types of local content. Newspaper sites ranked first as a source for local information (29 percent), local sports (27 percent), local entertainment (26 percent) and local classifieds (39 percent), ahead of both local television Web sites and online portals.

“This important research provides further evidence of newspapers’ successful multiplatform transition, with the medium serving as a continuous local resource for consumers,” said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. “While newspaper Web sites often face dozens of competitors touting their own local offerings in any given market, they have been able to thrive by leveraging trusted brands and strong local content to appeal to consumers and advertisers alike.”

Local newspaper Web sites ranked first among all sources for trustworthiness, credibility and being the most informative place to find local content of all types – including news, information, entertainment, sports and classified advertising. When respondents were asked what sources were most trustworthy or reliable, local newspaper Web sites bested local television sites by twelve percentage points for local information (34 percent vs. 22 percent), by six points for local sports (30 percent vs. 24 percent), by 10 points for local entertainment (30 percent vs. 20 percent) and by 29 points for local classifieds (42 percent vs. 13 percent).

Most Trusted Source for Advertising.

The survey also found that consumers consider local newspaper Web sites to be the most trusted source of online advertising, with ads that are perceived to be more current, credible and relevant to them.

Four-in-ten adults (40 percent) agreed that their opinion of online advertising is influenced by the type of Web site on which the ad appears. Of those, local newspaper sites ranked first in trustworthiness of advertising. More than one-third (36 percent) selected local newspaper Web sites for trustworthy advertising compared to less than one-fourth (23 percent) for local television Web sites and less than one-in-eight (12 percent) for online portals. And local newspaper sites were the clear winner across all demographic categories – even among the younger 18 – 34 age group, leading the second-ranked television Web sites by 13 percentage points (35 percent vs. 22 percent), and online portals by 24 percentage points (35 percent vs. 11 percent).

“This survey reinforces the notion that consumers value and trust the premium-quality content found at newspaper Web sites as well as the advertising on those sites,” said Randy Bennett, NAA’s senior vice president of Business Development. “It also provides further evidence that newspapers, which attracted a record 75 million visitors in January, offer advertisers a high-value audience that no other medium can match.”

More information on the study, including a sales presentation for advertising executives, is available at www.newspapermedia.com.

Other data from the comScore survey include:

Local Newspaper Web Sites are Most Informative: Newspaper Web sites ranked first in all five content types, edging out local television websites for local news (34 percent vs. 32 percent), with wider margins for local information (32 percent vs. 23 percent), local sports (30 percent vs. 24 percent) local entertainment (29 percent vs. 18 percent) and local classifieds (43 percent vs. 12 percent).

Local Newspaper Web Sites are Most Credible: Newspaper Web sites ranked first for being the most credible source, beating second-ranked local television Web sites for all content types, from local news (35 percent vs. 32 percent), local information (34 percent vs. 23 percent), local sports (30 percent vs.24 percent), local entertainment (30 percent vs. 19 percent) and local classifieds (43 percent vs. 13 percent).

Advertising on Local Newspaper Web Sites More Trustworthy: Nearly eight-in-ten respondents (78 percent) across all demographic groups rated “more likely to be current” as the top reason advertising on local newspaper Websites are most trustworthy. Credibility and local relevance were also important factors with close to 50 percent of respondents citing these attributes for reasons behind local newspapers advertising trustworthiness.

The comScore survey results follow initial data from “Consumer Insights,” a new study conducted by MORI Research, that indicates newspaper advertising remains the leading advertising medium cited by consumers in planning, shopping and making purchasing decisions. The survey of more than 3,000 adults found that 82 percent of adults said they “took action” as a result of newspaper advertising – from clipping a coupon or making a purchase to visiting a Web site. More information on this study is available here.

This comScore survey, fielded in November 2009, measured consumer attitudes and behaviors regarding local newspaper websites and content compared with other online sources of local news and information. The survey is based on a nationally representative sample of adults who use websites within the comScore panel. Participants received an e-mail invitation to take the online survey, which took approximately 10 minutes to complete. There were 3,055 completed interviews. Data were weighted on age, gender, income, and region to match national online targets prior to analysis.

NAA is a nonprofit organization representing nearly 2,000 newspapers and their multiplatform businesses in the U.S. and Canada. NAA members include daily newspapers, as well as non-dailies, other print publications and online products. Headquartered near Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Va., the Association focuses on the major issues that affect today's newspaper industry: public policy/legal matters, advertising revenue growth and audience development across the medium's broad portfolio of products and digital platforms.

Information about NAA and the industry also may be found at www.naa.org.

Former USC J-School dean passes away
3/1/10
Retired journalism school dean Joe Shoquist died Feb. 27 at Still Hopes Retirement Community in Columbia. He was 84.

Shoquist became the dean of the University of South Carolina’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications in 1986 and continued as dean of the journalism program until his retirement in 1991.

After education in local public schools, Shoquist attended the University of Iowa, interrupting his education to serve in the Army during 1946 and 1947. He received a B.A. in journalism in 1948 and an M.A. in 1951.

According to information gathered by Amy Rabideau Silvers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Shoquist began his professional career as a sports writer, working briefly with the Boise Statesman in 1948 before moving to the Idaho Falls Post Register. During the 1951-1952 school year, Shoquist was an instructor at the Journalism School of the University of Montana. From 1952 to 1954 he was general assignment reporter for the Great Falls Tribune.

In 1954, Shoquist relocated to Milwaukee to take a position as copy editor for the Milwaukee Sentinel. The following year he became a copy editor with the Milwaukee Journal. During the following years, he advanced to become telegraph editor in 1959, assistant news editor and then news editor in 1964, and assistant managing editor in 1966. In 1967, he was appointed managing editor.

Throughout his career Shoquist was active in various professional organizations including the Associated Press Managing Editors Association, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Wisconsin Associated Press Association and the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. He served as president of the APME in 1979 and president of ACEJ in 1983. Shoquist had a strong interest in issues concerning First Amendment rights and professional ethics. As head of the APME's Professional Standards Committee, he wrote the organization's widely used code of ethics. He was one of the founders of the First Amendment Congress in 1980.

Shoquist also served as a Pulitzer juror in 1978 and 1979. He was one of the co-founders of the First Amendment Congress’ board of trustees.

As a journalist, Shoquist traveled to India, Burma (now Myanmar), Thailand, Taiwan and Japan. He also covered President Richard Nixon’s trip to the Soviet Union in 1972 and visited Iran and Poland during the 1972 trip. Later, as managing of The Milwaukee Journal, Shoquist was a questioner at Nixon’s news conference in November 1973 where the President made the famous comment: “I am not a crook.”

While dean of College of Journalism and Mass Communications, Shoquist was successful in gaining much needed new resources for the college, changing the profile of the faculty and making great strides toward diversity. He pushed hard for and gained approval for a doctoral program for the college.

When he retired as dean in 1991, Shoquist was quoted in “Intercom,” the college’s publication, as saying he would like to be remembered as a champion of ethics. He added, “I’d also like to be remembered as an editor who ran a successful newspaper, a newspaper with fierce independence. We simply weren’t obligated to anybody. We were a scrappy newspaper. I think the worst thing a newspaper can do is to toady to special interests.”
 
A memorial service will be held on Saturday, March 6, at 2 pm in Rutledge Chapel on the University of South Carolina's historic Horseshoe.
 
The College of Journalism has a memorial page on for Dean Shoquist:
http://jour.sc.edu/news/newsann/10Spring/shoquist_joe.html

Editorial: House should adopt new EMS rules
3/1/10
The Greenville News
The South Carolina Senate has brought some needed sunlight to what should have always been the public records of publicly funded emergency medical services. The Senate last week quickly passed a bill sponsored by state Sen. Harvey Peeler, a Gaffney Republican, which would take the veil of secrecy off EMS records.

The bill that came out of the Senate wasn’t perfect, but it goes a long way toward addressing the unintended consequences of a 2004 law that incidentally was sponsored by Peeler. The Senate Medical Affairs Committee that Peeler chairs gave 8-3 approval on Feb. 18 to the bill that would open the records of EMS agencies.

A majority of senators on that committee agreed to an amendment that would keep secret the names of EMS responders. That’s an unnecessary protection, and one that is not extended to police officers and firefighters. Those two groups of public servants also are involved in life-and-death situations, and they sometimes are criticized unfairly for their work.

More often than not, police officers and firefighters are proven correct in their split-second decisions, and the same surely would hold true for EMTs, too. And quite often, those hard-working public servants are held up for praise, not criticism.

Still, the amended bill is far better than what was in place. The amendment even allows the patient, immediate family member or legal representative to obtain the EMT’s name, and that affected party is not bound to secrecy.

The 2004 law sponsored by Peeler was at the request of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control. The intention was to make the state comply with laws designed to protect patient privacy. In fact, nothing in the debate this month was about exposing the names of patients. Peeler’s new bill was aimed at correcting the 2004 law that slammed the door on EMS records and response times.

Twice now, in Beaufort and Richland counties, the public was denied information that should not be hidden. In Beaufort, county officials won’t release information about emergency response times or about an incident in which county EMS workers were criticized for not taking a man with head injuries to a better-equipped hospital, The State newspaper reported. In Columbia, the public cannot get a 911 recording and incident report about events surrounding the death of a 3-year-old boy who was not rushed immediately to the hospital, according to the newspaper.

The public has a right to know how its money is being spent and how publicly funded agencies are being run. Such information is vital to creating the level of accountability that citizens deserve and should be able to expect.

Peeler is to be commended for working so hard to strip away the secrecy that surrounds EMS records. The South Carolina Press Association, which represents newspapers throughout the state, also has worked diligently to ensure those records are available to the public. The bill now goes to the House of Representatives.

It should receive quick approval there, too.

Morris Publishing's restructuring plan confirmed
3/1/10
The bankruptcy court overseeing Morris Publishing Group's reorganization plan has confirmed the plan and approved the adequacy of its Disclosure Statement, clearing the way for the company to emerge from bankruptcy as soon as March 1.

Once it emerges from bankruptcy, Morris Publishing and its 13 daily newspapers will operate from a stronger financial position, having reduced its overall principal amount of indebtedness from approximately $418 million to approximately $107 million.

"We are delighted with the court's decision," said William S. Morris III, chairman of Morris Publishing. "This restructuring process has been lengthy and difficult, especially for our dedicated and loyal employees. I want to personally thank them, along with our advertisers, suppliers and readers, for their valued support during this period.

"Our commitment is to remain an agile and innovative market-driven newspaper company whose core mission is to gather and distribute news, support our advertisers and publish great newspapers and Web sites."

Morris filed its Pre-Packaged Plan of Reorganization in January with the overwhelming support of its bondholders as well as its senior secured creditors. Upon emergence, the company will exchange $100 million of new second lien secured notes due in 2014 for the cancellation of approximately $278.5 million of principal amount of outstanding senior subordinated unsecured notes due 2013 plus accrued and unpaid interest.

Concurrent with the exchange of bondholder debt, affiliated entities owned and controlled by the Morris family will make a capital contribution of approximately $85 million and a repayment of intercompany indebtedness of approximately $25 million, resulting in the cancellation of approximately $110 million of Morris Publishing's senior secured debt.

For more information about the company's restructuring, visit Morris Publishing's Web site, www.morrisrestructures.com.

Avoid 78% piece price increase for 'flimsy' newspapers
3/1/10
The National Newspaper Association received news this week that its campaign to help community newspapers avoid a postage up-charge intended for lightweight publications was successful and a 78% in-county piece rate increase that would have taken effect in June has been averted. The Postal Service announced that it would not assess a charge on carrier-routed newspapers entered at delivery offices. The charge may still apply to outside-county carrier-routed newspapers that fail a “droop” test.

The test applies to flat mail that droops more than 4 inches when extended 5 inches off a flat surface.

NNA President Cheryl Kaechele, publisher of the Allegan County (MI) News) said the charge was proposed last fall, and that NNA’s Postal Committee Chairman Max Heath had immediately swung into action to prevent it. The “droop” test is imposed to charge flats that are too lightweight to be handled by automated sorting machinery, but in the latest iteration, USPS had said it thought that even publications not sorted by machine should be assessed the charge.

“We were greatly concerned,” Kaechele said, “The Postal Service had announced that there would be no postage increases during this very challenging economy. Then to suddenly find this daunting charge looming because of a mere rules change was very bad news indeed. We congratulate the Postal Committee and Max Heath for effective advocacy to turn back this threat to our industry.”

Heath said: “NNA won a decisive victory in its effort to ensure that so-called ‘flimsy flats’ entered at DDU post offices retain the Basic carrier-route price for 6-124 Periodical pieces or 10-124 Standard Mail Enhanced Carrier route pieces on a route if they fail a so-called ‘deflection’ test.

“NNA was the only association publicly cited during a presentation on the final rule at the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee in Washington February 17 for the reasonableness and quality of arguments to a Federal Register filing. NNA, several members, and some state associations filed comments showing that newspapers would be discriminated against with a 78% increase to 5-digit Periodical rates should a newspaper fail a new, more restrictive ‘droop test.’” This revised test applies to “flat mail” that droops more than 4 vertical inches when extended 5 inches off a flat surface.

The final rule, effective June 7, indicates that the test will be applied to periodicals, such as magazines, that don't enter at Destination Delivery Units.

Heath said, “I encourage publishers to maximize their DDU drops if at all possible to avoid this nasty penalty if they have a concern that their newspaper could fail the droop test.”

"This decision once again shows the value of mailers dropping their own subscriber copies via Exceptional Dispatch to DDU post offices, both in-county and across county lines, anywhere substantial carrier-route mail exists," Heath said. “Likewise, those with Standard Mail shoppers get the same price discount on Basic price carrier route sorted mail entered at the DDU. High-density and Saturation mail is already exempt from this penalty in both classes.”

Each NNA member newspaper without high page counts will enjoy a savings of 4.6 cents per piece when sorted to the Basic carrier-route price In-county (line A13 of Form 3541), and 12.3 cents on every Basic carrier-route price piece Outside County (line C25 of 3541). DDU-entered shopper copies would have a savings of 11.4 cents per piece from Basic-price pieces staying on line I12 rather than going to line E9 for 5-digit rates on a 3602-R.

Members can annualize their savings by multiplying $0.046 times in-county Basic carrier route copies times the number of issues in a year, then $0.123 times outside-county Basic carrier route copies times annual issues. For newspapers with shoppers, or free Standard Mail newspapers, paying Basic carrier-route rate, multiply $0.114 times line I12 copies times the number of issues in a year. That should more than pay for annual dues for any member and multiple years membership for some.

Details of the deflection test, which is still being argued by major mailers, will appear in Max Heath's Pub Aux Postal Tips column prior to implementation.

SCPA attorney says Anderson School District 5 budget workshop should be open to public
2/26/10
Anderson Independent-Mail
By Liz Carey
Anderson School District 5 will need to trim more than $10 million from its budget, according to its superintendent, for fiscal year 2010-11.

At a meeting Friday in Nevitt Forest Community School of Innovation in Anderson, Superintendent Betty Bagley laid out to teachers what administrators and the District 5 school board will need to deal with in the coming months.

Bagley said she has visited many of the district schools already to speak about the issue and would go to the other ones that invite her.

Since August 2008, the district has lost $8 million, Bagley said.

For the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1, cuts in education funding at the state level and increases in health-insurance costs mean the district must find ways to cut $10.3 million from an already lean budget.

“We're doing everything possible to not reach into the classroom,” Bagley said. “We really don't want our kids to know we're in a financial crisis.”

The district already has eliminated more than 80 positions, cut back on travel and supplies, instituted furlough days and a hiring freeze as well as taken $1.6 million from the district fund balance.

The South Carolina House of Representatives voted Thursday to reduce the base student cost to $1,630, a funding level not seen since 1995, Bagley said. Last year's funding level, with stimulus money, was $2,324 per student. Bagley said the district would lose more than $7.5 million of state money for fiscal year 2010-11 as a result of the reduction.

Increased costs for health insurance and teacher salaries as well as loss of grants are among the factors that push the district to need to cut $10.3 million.

District 5 trustees are scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. on March 15 for a budget workshop. According to a release from the district, the workshop will happen in closed session.

Jay Bender, attorney with the South Carolina Press Association, said budget workshops should be open to the public.

“A school district budget may not be discussed in executive session,” Bender said. “A public body may hold a meeting closed to the public to discuss the employment or compensation of 'a person,' but not to discuss a budget. I would argue that even if the budget contemplates the elimination of positions, it does not authorize an executive session discussion because the funding of a position is independent of the identity of any person who might hold the position at any one time. For example, a discussion of eliminating one first-grade teaching position does not identify any particular teacher.”

Bill passes out of Senate committee opening most EMS records to public
2/18/10
The Senate Medical Affairs committee has approved a bill that opens almost all information in EMS records to public inspection.

"This is a really important step and we applaude Sen. Peeler and the committee for taking this step in removing a blanket of secrecy over EMS data, including response times," said Bill Rogers, SCPA Executive Director. "The public has the right to know how EMS respondents perform their tax-payer supported activities."

The bill was amended Thursday morning to keep the names of EMS responders secret, but it specifies that victims and family member would be assured access to the names of EMTs and that they can release this information to the media.  

Rogers testified that he thought EMTs should be treated like policemen and firemen and their names should be released. He said after the vote that he was very pleased that most EMS record data would be open if the bill passes.

Rogers said they had to make a very basic policy decision:  were EMTs more like nurses and doctors, or more like policemen and firemen, who also respond to 911 calls and are paid for by public funds.

The vote was 8-3 for the amended version keeping the names secret, with Peeler, and Sens. Hutto and Hayes, voting against it.

Rogers thanked all the newspaper executives who made calls in support of the bill, and those who ran editorials and op-ed pieces in support of open government involving EMS records.

"Your efforts made a difference," he said.

A similar bill is pending in a House committee.

Bill would reduce voter notices in local papers
2/18/10
A bill that would allow the S.C. Election Commission and local governments to save money by publishing fewer, shorter voter notices in local newspapers, has passed the House Election Laws subcommittee.

The bill states that most of the information in legal advertisements would be shifted from newspapers to the Election Commission's Web site. Smaller ads in newspapers would direct readers to the site.

The House Elections Laws subcommittee today rejected an amendment presented by Rep. Wendy Nanney that would have given election officials the option of either placing election notices in newspapers or on the State Elections Commission Web site.  If passed, the  original bill and the amendment would have ended publication of election notices in local newspapers. 

A compromise amendment presented by Rep. Bakari Sellers was unanimously approved.  Rep. Sellers’ amendment requires that shortened newspaper notices still have to be run giving the date, time, type of election and deadline for registering to vote. These  legal ads would be run in papers once, rather than twice. 

The adopted version also would require notice on the State Election Commission Web site not later than 45 days before the election, rather than the 60 days now in the law.

The future of this bill in the Senate is doubtful.   

SCPA member Lee Harter, editor of The Times and Democrat, testified that placing the notice in newspapers is important because Web-only notices disenfranchise voters who lack Internet access.  

Students needed for NAA's news challenge
2/19/10
March 1 is the deadline to apply for the News Challenge, a cutting-edge training session for college students interested in working in digital media.

The program gives students a sense of the multimedia opportunities at newspaper companies as well as visibility among digital professionals and executives who could hire them for internships and/or jobs.

Visit NAA Foundation to learn more.

Get free materials for NIE Week 
2/18/10
Newspaper In Education Week is observed annually during the first full school week of March.

For this year’s celebration, March 1-5, the NAA Foundation has created a teacher's guide, an in-paper ad and a Web site banner ad.

The teacher’s guide, which is aligned with national learning standards, features a five-subject approach that takes advantage of the wide range of topics covered by newspapers.

The kit is available on the NAA Foundation Web site: www.naafoundation.org.

Editorial: EMS records should be open
2/17/10
The Greenville News
In South Carolina, it’s now impossible to get key details about what happens when publicly funded emergency medical crews respond to an accident or illness.

Emergency medical services operate under a shroud of secrecy after the South Carolina Attorney General issued a 2009 opinion that essentially said the public must be kept in the dark about many EMS operations because of a 2004 law.

State Sen. Harvey Peeler, a Gaffney Republican, is trying to make amends for the 2004 law that has brought some unintended consequences. The Senate Medical Affairs Committee that Peeler chairs should quickly approve the new bill so it can go to the full Senate. To Peeler’s credit, he’s sponsoring the bill that made it out of a subcommittee last week after some arguments that strayed far off course.

Peeler has said he sponsored the 2004 legislation at the request of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, and his intention was to make the state comply with laws designed to protect patient privacy. In this debate now before the Senate Medical Affairs Committee, no one is asking to know anything that would violate patient privacy.

The 2004 law is being used by local governments trying to protect themselves — not protect a patient. This is where everyone in the state has a right to be fighting mad, because EMS is funded by tax dollars and emergency responders are public employees.

Imagine what would happen if police reports about traffic accidents or crimes suddenly were denied to the public. Or if people had no clue how long it took a police officer to respond to a crime because that information was blocked from public view.

Police officers, firefighters and 911 operators are accustomed to having their work scrutinized by the taxpayers who are picking up the tab. These public employees have challenging jobs, and quite often they are redeemed when the public gets the full view of their split-second decisions. EMS responders deserve the same scrutiny, and they most often would find overwhelming support for their decisions, too.

Peeler’s corrective legislation ran into a buzz saw last week when former state Rep. Steve Lanford, who now is executive director of the S.C. Emergency Medical Services Association, dredged up a bizarre personal incident. He also said, according to The State newspaper, that the media are “looking for negative things to print and will do whatever they can to sell papers.” Lanford revisted his situation from years ago that he said left him understanding what it feels like to be a victim of community suspicions.

That personal case has nothing to do with EMS records, but it apparently has fueled Lanford’s opposition to Peeler’s new law. “The paramedic could become the victim,” Lanford said, according to the Hilton Head Island Packet. “My responsibility is to protect the names of paramedics. … I want to make sure that people who are innocent don’t get wrongly accused by someone who is non-medical.”

Twice now, in Beaufort and Richland counties, the public was denied information that should not be hidden. In Beaufort, county officials won’t release information about emergency response times or about an incident in which county EMS workers were criticized for not taking a man with head injuries to a better-equipped hospital, The State reported. In Columbia, the public cannot get a 911 recording and incident report about events surrounding the death of a 3-year-old boy who was not rushed immediately to the hospital, according to the newspaper.

Such cases demonstrate this law is being misused to possibly protect local governments, not guard patient privacy. Local state senators Mike Fair, David Thomas, Danny Verdin, Ralph Anderson and Shane Martin sit on the Medical Affairs Committee that will debate this proposed law. They need to make sure their fellow senators change a law that allows secrecy to surround life-and-death decisions made by EMS crews.

Editorial: Records of EMS should be
matter of public record
2/16/10
The Times and Democrat
THE ISSUE: Keeping EMS records secret

OUR OPINION: Lawmaker needs support in undoing legislation that flies in the face of FOIA

Getting police, auto accidents and fire reports, and other public records, is not always as easy as it should be.

A citizen can walk into many police agencies and ask for a report that is public information under state law and be denied as a matter of routine. Reporters constantly battle to see that information of legitimate public interest is not removed from reports. And there always is the question of whether all reports are being made available.

Importantly, state law is on the side of public and press. The state’s Freedom of Information Act is designed to ensure access.

But there is a critical exception with records about emergency response. A state law, passed some years ago at the request of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, casts a blanket of secrecy over all EMS information.

State Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney, said that was not the intent, and he is working hard to fix the problem and amend the current law. But another secrecy issue has come up.

The S.C. EMS Association wants the names of public EMS responders kept secret, and its efforts could stall Peeler in returning sunlight to EMS information across the state.

The EMS group wants responders’ names to be withheld from the public and press until after a peer-review process, if there is one.

S.C. Press Association Executive Director Bill Rogers writes, “The group ignores the fact that if you don’t have a responder’s name, you can’t very well file a complaint, and there won’t be a peer review. In the more likely circumstance, you can’t thank a responder who did a great job because you won’t know a name.”

The problem came up last year after an S.C. Attorney General’s opinion about releasing information. Since then, officials in Columbia and in Beaufort County have refused to release information about EMS calls. They contend it isn’t public. That includes how emergency workers responded to a stricken 3-year-old boy in Columbia and a severely beaten man in Beaufort County.

“The argument for secrecy is that EMTs would be unfairly targeted for criticism by the public and in the press. The EMS Association has been asked to provide evidence to support this assertion, but has failed to do so,” Rogers says.

If the same fear of criticism is applied across the board to police officers, firefighters and others, what’s to say there shouldn’t be exceptions for them too? Is the public ready to have a veil of secrecy cast over all work by those in such roles? We think not.

As Rogers says, “EMS responders are public servants and the public deserves to know who they are and how they perform their jobs. Like policemen, they have no legitimate expectation of privacy concerning their professional conduct.”

The issue is not public access to medical or treatment records relating to patients, but access to information regarding the performance of EMS units. Public oversight of EMS activity is vital. Legislators should come forward in support of Peeler’s effort to repeal the current law barring public review of emergency medical services and defeat amendments keeping the names of responders secret.

Opinion: Emergency medical workers should be held accountable
2/17/10
The Island Packet
A bill that would lift a veil of secrecy shrouding emergency medical services in South Carolina moved forward Thursday.

A Senate subcommittee approved the bill that would open up emergency medical services information, including ambulance response times. So far, so good.

The public is ill-served by a law that allows no independent oversight of emergency medical services, not even the most general of information, such as response times.

Lawmakers say they never intended to prevent public scrutiny of this critical public service and promised to fix the unnecessary secrecy.

The problem came to light when an opinion from the Attorney General's Office concluded that the law prohibits the release not only of identifying patient information, but also "all data, including response times, trip numbers, requests for helicopter transport by numbers and dates and other general raw data compiled from day-to-day operations of emergency services department."

The opinion also stated that the law protects the identity of emergency medical personnel.

Despite lawmakers' assurances, no one should expect clear sailing ahead. Specious arguments about the need to protect the identity of emergency medical workers dominated the debate last week and could stall the bill.

Unfortunately, the claims came from a former legislator, and former legislators tend to hold more sway than the rest of us, and not necessarily because of the merits of their positions on an issue.

Former Rep. Steve Lanford, executive director of the S.C. Emergency Medical Services Association, claimed emergency medical responders need more protections than other public employees, such as firefighters and police officers.

Lanford said the names of emergency workers should be kept confidential unless they are under a state inquiry for their performance. Otherwise, they could be falsely accused and their names distributed in the media.

He sees a media bogeyman where none exists, and he offers no specific examples of the problem he claims. He also ignores a central tenet of open government and accountability: People who work for the public should not be shielded from oversight.

If a police officer can operate in full public light, if a firefighter can operate in full public light, then so can a paramedic. How they conduct their jobs also is of vital public interest. Any privacy expectation should be there for patients, not for public employees.

The Senate bill still protects patient privacy. Lawmakers must now make sure that it doesn't hide emergency medical workers and how they do their jobs from public scrutiny.

Hilton Head fire chief incensed by bills that shield EMS data from the public
2/17/10
The Island Packet
By Renee Dudley
The Town of Hilton Head Island fire chief railed against the secrecy shrouding EMS systems throughout South Carolina during a meeting Tuesday of a town committee charged with forming official positions on bills in the legislature.

Three bills now before lawmakers involve how much data can be released to the public on EMS operations. Hilton Head Fire & Rescue Chief Lavarn Lucas said none of the three go far enough in opening public access to EMS data.

"In our opinion, they do not free it up significantly," Lucas told the committee.

In coming weeks, Hilton Head Town Council's Intergovernmental Relations Committee will write to officials in Columbia outlining the town's stance on the bills. Committee members said Tuesday they were ready to accept Lucas' recommendations, pending a meeting to discuss them with state Rep. Richard Chalk, R-Hilton Head.

"We'd like to effect changes to the statewide EMS system," Lucas said. "I'm not going to say it's backwards, but it's not the most progressive system out there."

The current law regarding EMS operations, passed in 2004, restricts public access to virtually all EMS data, according to an August opinion from the state Attorney General's office. Beaufort County officials requested that opinion after denying requests from The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette for EMS response-time data.

The two bills in the House have provisions that still would restrict ambulance response-time data -- statistics crucial for public scrutiny of EMS systems, Lucas said.

"It frees (the data) up partially, but not as much as we think is appropriate," Lucas said.
"... The data used to determine the efficacy of our operation should be available for public scrutiny."

One of the bills contains a measure that keeps secret state investigations regarding paramedic misconduct -- information that Lucas said also should be available to the public.
"If a paramedic ever acted inappropriately, no one would ever know," he said. "... There's no reason that (an investigation) should be hidden. It forces us to hide behind a wall and makes us appear guilty when we haven't done anything wrong."

The third bill -- filed by Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee -- repeals the 2004 law that restricts public access to all EMS data. Peeler, who sponsored the 2004 law at the request of officials from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, has said he didn't know the measure would keep EMS response data secret.

The Senate bill is being debated in the Senate Medical Affairs Committee, which Peeler chairs. Passage of the bill, however, is being opposed by Steve Lanford, a former state representative and current executive director of the S.C. Emergency Medical Services Association. Lanford wants to keep the names of emergency medical responders secret.

Lucas said Tuesday he would not object to paramedics' names being made public, though his official recommendation would be to make them available only by subpoena.

Horry County e-mails raise concerns; council may have violated S.C. law
2/16/10
The Sun News
By Claudia Lauer
The Horry County Council has routinely conducted business by e-mail, circumventing public knowledge of issues by scheduling meetings designed to avoid quorums, excluding three members who do not use e-mail, having in-depth discussions on issues pertinent to voters and taxpayer dollars and deleting e-mails that under state guidelines should have been kept as public documents.

The council may have violated the state's Freedom of Information Act by having several conversations about county business via e-mail that, according to the law, should have taken place in a public meeting. The Sun News obtained 1,348 pages of e-mails sent between January 2009 and January 2010 to and from County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland's county-issued e-mail address, through a request filed under the state's Freedom of Information Act.

Some examples:

• Poll | Does the county council talk too much about county business via email?
• E-mail | Gilland, Worley discuss budget
• E-mail | More discussion about administrator search by council members
• E-mail | Horry County Council members discuss administrator search

On Nov. 30 and Dec. 9, Gilland sent e-mails to a quorum of council members resulting in a debate on the search for a county administrator and showing a council where rampant infighting stood in the way of choosing a candidate.

On Jan. 13, Gilland sent an e-mail to schedule a meeting to discuss motorcycle rally issues, "without an audience" and without several interested council members being invited.

On June 7, 8 and 10, Gilland polled council members about their budget priorities, asked for a quiet passage of those priorities, and attempted to schedule a meeting of a group of council members shy of a quorum to "hammer out the details so that we don't look foolish when we meet as a group."

Council members routinely extoll the council's efforts to conduct open meetings, often citing the small number of executive sessions held during public meetings in recent years, but the nature of these e-mail conversations reveal a council that does not always conduct business as openly as the members proclaim and chooses to polish their public discussions in private.

Bill Rogers, the executive director of the S.C. Press Association, said regardless of whether a vote was taken, a discussion about county business, including the search for a new county administrator, by a majority of council members was inappropriate in a private setting and violated the spirit and letter of the state law.

"That's improper. ... That's just plain abhorrent," Rogers said. "I think that casts a legal pall over the entire search. The whole search could be thrown out because of that conversation in my opinion. The Freedom of Information Act covers that; you cannot conduct business or meet by electronic means ... and that's what this looks like."

The Freedom of Information Act request returned correspondence to or from Gilland, and councilmen Harold Worley, Brent Schulz, Gary Loftus, Howard Barnard, Bob Grabowski, Carl Schwartzkopf, Jody Prince and Al Allen, as well as council clerk Pat Hartley. Councilmen Paul Prince, James Frazier and Marion Foxworth do not use e-mail and did not return any documents.

In an e-mail string, Gilland directed the council members to study the resumes they received from The Mercer Group Inc., the executive search firm helping with the administrator's search, and choose a second round of finalists. The e-mail was sent the morning after the County Council deadlocked in a 6-6 vote on whether to pay an additional fee to Mercer to continue the administrator's search.

After the motion failed, and another motion with suggestions to move forward was not offered, the County Council adjourned.

The e-mail from Gilland on Dec. 9 and another e-mail sent Nov. 30 both sparked several rounds of responses and debate about how to move forward in the search, including whether to postpone choosing an administrator until after the next council election, whether to open the second round to previous finalists and whether to accept new resumes in addition to the Mercer findings - none of which is exempted from public discussion under the Freedom of Information Act.

"After that meeting, the feelings were really on edge," Gilland said.

"It wasn't an ordinary deadlock. People were at each others throats. The depth of feeling among the council members caught me off guard. The best thing to do that night was to adjourn, but the next council meeting was almost a month away so I tried to set forward a plan. It was a procedural discussion. It wasn't singling anyone out or trying to push any candidate forward, but to push us out of a deadlock and come up with a plan so that we could go forward."

Gilland said that calling a special meeting of council during the holidays would have been hard because of conflicting schedules, and that 100 percent participation of council would have been unlikely. The three councilmen without e-mail were not included in the e-mail discussions that occurred.

The S.C. Freedom of Information Act states that a public meeting is defined as "the convening of a quorum of the constituent membership of a public body, whether corporal or by means of electronic equipment to discuss or act upon a matter over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power."

In another round of e-mails, Gilland polled council members about how they wanted to spend taxpayer money, saying she wanted to see if there was a consensus.

Two days later after a budget workshop, Gilland sent an e-mail to two councilmen asking if they could live with the budget and if they planned to speak against the consensus during the public meeting.

"You're not going to try to get a crowd to vote no, are you? Two more no's and we start over," Gilland wrote.

She later sent an e-mail suggesting that five council members, two shy of a quorum, meet before the public discussion to hash through some aspects before the public meeting.

Rogers said the e-mails were inappropriate and that budget allocations and expenditures of public money should always be discussed in public.

"It's a violation of their trust as public officials having budget votes and or discussions via e-mail. As far as arranging meetings of [less than a quorum of council] that's just enabling an illegal meeting," Rogers said.

Several councilmen did not respond in e-mail to the budget question. Others answered briefly. Gilland said council members do not undergo any training about e-mail correspondence when they are elected.

"I think I probably disagree that those e-mails were not appropriate, in that all that does is give the chairman a heads up to where she might lead the discussion," Barnard said. "There were no negotiations; there was no chit chat back and forth. That would not be the way that I would do business, but had I disagreed I wouldn't have responded. ... I just saw that as informational."

Grabowski said the e-mails were purely informational.

"It's not out of the ordinary for us to coordinate with each other on issues, but no final decision is made until we are together as a full council in public. It's against ethics for us to gather in a quorum for lunch or for some event to discuss items, but I don't think e-mail has anything to do with that. I'm not uncomfortable discussing things over e-mail," he said. "I think if you look at the e-mails and look at the minutes of our meetings, a lot of the things that were discussed in the e-mails were again brought up in a council meeting and workshops."

Several proposals for the administrator search were only mentioned in e-mails between council members or were discussed at length in e-mails, but were only mentioned in a few sentences during the January meeting when the council compromised on a solution to move forward.

Foxworth and Paul Prince said they, for the most part, didn't feel left out of the discussions that were happening over e-mail and that they frequently caught up on e-mail conversations through phone calls.

Other council members said that if business were to change, it would likely mean the same conversations would take place in person rather than in e-mail.

"What occurs to me is that we ought to have an e-mail policy," Loftus said. "There's going to be a lot of gray we have to deal with. Can we come up with a policy that is relatively straightforward and clear? ... It's a gray area because would the same conversations have raised a flag if they had happened over the phone?

"And you can't tell me that everyone from the legislature to the city council aren't having similar discussions. I think you may see more people deleting e-mail messages and more people picking up a phone instead."

Contest/Meeting Update
2/16/10
All contest winners have now been posted with the exception of 106-Online Single Photo, 127-Weekly Newspaper Web site and 128-Best Online News Project. These will be posted on Wednesday, Feb. 17, as soon as they are returned from the judge.

Please contact Jen by Friday, Feb. 19, with any corrections for plaques and displays.

Also, if you did not send PDF files of your entries at the contest deadline, you can get winning PDF files to us by Feb. 24. NO PDFS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER FEB. 24. Do not e-mail PDFS. Please mail on a CD/Flash Drive or e-mail us for an FTP log-in code and follow instructions on how to upload to our FTP. Please let us know if you plan to do this so we can be on the lookout.

The deadline to reserve a room at the Hilton Columbia Center is Friday, Feb. 26... NO EXCEPTIONS. If you have not yet booked your room, now is the time to do so.You will not be able to register at our significantly discounted rate after Feb. 26. Click here to register and enter group code: PRESS.

Op-Ed: Public oversight of EMS activity vital
2/12/10
By Bill Rogers
If you want to find out how long it takes for a publicly funded Emergency Medical Services crew to respond to a call in South Carolina, forget it.  It’s secret.

An obscure state law, passed some years ago at the request of DHEC, casts a blanket of secrecy over all EMS information.

State Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney, is working hard to fix the problem and amend the current law, but now another secrecy issue has come up.

The S.C. EMS Association wants the names of public EMS responders kept secret, and its desire for secrecy could stall Sen. Peeler’s effort to bring sunlight to EMS information across the state.

The EMS group wants responders’ names to be withheld from the public and press until after a peer-review process, if there is one.  

The group ignores the fact that if you don’t have a responder’s name, you can’t very well file a complaint, and there won’t be a peer review.  In the more likely circumstance, you can’t thank a responder who did a great job because you won’t know a name.

The secrecy problem came up last year after an S.C. Attorney General’s opinion about releasing information.  Since then, officials in Columbia and in Beaufort County have refused to release information about EMS calls, saying it isn’t public.

That includes how emergency workers responded to a stricken 3-year-old boy in Columbia and a severely beaten man in Beaufort County.

The argument for secrecy is that EMTs would be unfairly targeted for criticism by the public and in the press.  The EMS Association has been asked to provide evidence to support this assertion, but has failed to do so.

EMS responders are public servants and the public deserves to know who they are and how they perform their jobs.  Like policemen, they have no legitimate expectation of privacy concerning their professional conduct.  The EMS group argues that because nurses’ names are confidential, EMTs’ names also should be confidential.  The fallacy of this position is that it ignores a state law specifically requiring that nurses, doctors and other health care providers in hospitals wear name badges so they can be identified.

The issue is not public access to medical or treatment records relating to patients, but access to information regarding the performance of EMS units. Public oversight of EMS activity is vital. Our legislators need to get behind Sen. Peeler’s effort to repeal the current law barring public review of emergency medical services, and defeat amendments keeping the names of responders secret.

Rogers is Executive Director of the S.C. Press Association.

Please click here to download Rogers' mug shot.

EMS information bill advances
2/12/10
The State
By Sammy Fretwell
A bill to shed light on how emergency response teams do their jobs got a boost Thursday in the S.C. Legislature -- despite a continuing disagreement over public access to emergency services records.

A Senate subcommittee approved a bill opening emergency medical services information — including response times — to the public. The bill now goes to the full committee.

Since an August 2009 S.C. Attorney General’s opinion, officials in Columbia and in Beaufort County have declined to release information about EMS calls, saying it isn’t public. That includes how emergency workers responded to a stricken 3-year-old boy in Columbia and a severely beaten man in Beaufort County.

Former Rep. Steve Lanford, who heads the S.C. Emergency Medical Services Association, said Thursday he wants the names of emergency workers kept confidential unless they are under a state inquiry for their performance. Otherwise they could be falsely accused and their names distributed in the media, he said.

“What the press is looking to do through . . . negative ads in newspapers, is ‘Let’s make them guilty until they prove themselves innocent,’ ’’ Lanford said.

But S.C. Press Association director Bill Rogers said the names should be public, just like police officers and firefighters, to make sure they’re accountable.

“These are public servants,’’ Rogers said. “We’ve had two severe cases where information has not been able to be released, one in Beaufort and another one in Columbia just recently. So we really think this is an important bill and needs to move forward.’’

That dispute has slowed progress on a bill intended to open all the records now being interpreted as closed, including 911 recordings, reports on response times and incident reports. The Attorney General’s opinion says current state law protects any data from release that would identify emergency medical personnel.

Sen. Harvey Peeler, who chairs the Medical Affairs Committee, said the dispute needs a resolution and the records need to be opened.

“I’m real mad about it,’’ Peeler said after Thursday’s meeting. “Let’s fix it.’’

Peeler, R-Cherokee, said he introduced legislation six years ago that inadvertently closed the records at the request of the Department of Health and Environmental Control. But the intent was to protect patient privacy, not shut off information about response calls, Peeler said. The bill before the Senate now continues to protect patient privacy.

If the bill becomes law, media outlets and individuals could obtain the records through freedom of information requests.

Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said that while the disagreement hasn’t been resolved, the full Senate Medical Af-fairs Committee needs to vote on the bill.

“As much as we sometimes hate to face these issues, it’s just one we need to face,’’ Hutto said. It “doesn’t look like there is a compromise. But it certainly deserves consideration.’’

Inland Press seeks participants for salary survey
2/11/10
Over the last two decades, the Newspaper Industry Compensation Survey (owned and operated by Inland Press Association) has become established as the principal and authoritative resource for comp planning by U.S. newspapers.

In order to participate in this survey a newspaper has to publish at least 5 times per week. An informational brochure about the NICS can be found here. All SCPA member newspapers are eligible for the member discount listed below.

The Newspaper Industry Compensation Survey (NICS) is the largest and most complete and authoritative survey of salaries for newspaper positions. The survey covers nearly 100 job titles specific to the newspaper industry. It is the “industry standard” and guides the compensation planning process for most newspaper groups. Inland’s professional research department has 93 years of unblemished performance in handling confidential financial data.

The purpose of the survey is to provide high-quality planning data for pay levels and pay practices in the United States and Canada. The survey provides comprehensive pay data that enable papers to:

• Receive reliable and effective pay benchmarks, the quality and scope of which cannot be found elsewhere. Compare compensation levels by circulation size,
  by revenue level, by geographic region and with the newspaper industry as a whole.
• Assist the newspaper industry in managing an important fact of business.
• Explain compensation decisions.

The basic report and the available custom reports provide only averages. No specific information regarding any individual newspaper is ever released.

The Inland Press Association has been processing confidential financial data for more than 90 years without a breach of confidentiality. Inland is proud of this unblemished record and is dedicated to upholding it.

The survey is subject to quality control supervision. Consultants will continue as a quality control counsel to Inland. These outside sources have counseled the survey for the past 15 years. Inland’s HR Business Research Manager will supervise the input and compilation of data for the final report. The survey’s policies are guided by an industry task force, administered by the Inland Press Association and co-sponsored by International Newspaper Financial Executives, Newspaper Association of America, New England Newspaper Association, Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association, and California Newspaper Publishers Association.

The survey cost is based on circulation size. Early bird fees (prior to March 1):

NICS - under 30,000 $85
NICS - 30,001 - 100,000 $175
NICS - over 100,000 $375
Late fees apply after March 1. Final deadline is April 26.

A custom report for newspapers is available that allows you to select 10 or more newspapers from the participation list.

Regional reports provide a geographic breakdown of survey data. There are 10 different regions offered.

The survey includes a year-to-year comparison for the past five years for selected survey positions.

If you would like more information about this opportunity or are willing to become a partner, please contact Karla Zander. Her contact info is listed in the brochure.

EMS bill runs into fierce opposition from trade group
2/11/10
The Island Packet
By Renee Dudley
A bill in the legislature that would open public access to EMS records is being threatened by a state EMS official who wants to keep the names of emergency medical responders secret.

Former state Rep. Steve Lanford, who is now executive director of the S.C. Emergency Medical Services Association, said the bill could subject emergency responders to undue criticism and public scrutiny.

"The paramedic could become the victim," Lanford said. "My responsibility is to protect the names of paramedics. ... I want to make sure that people that are innocent don't get wrongly accused by someone who is non-medical."

Bill Rogers, executive director of the S.C. Press Association, called Lanford's claim "ridiculous," saying EMS responders shouldn't be treated differently than police officers, firefighters and other public employees.

"Of course patients have a right to privacy, but EMS technicians don't," Rogers said. "The public should know who's treating them."

Lanford said he doesn't think emergency medical responders should be compared to other public employees.

"They're medical people," he said. "What do you (the media) need with it? You don't need it," he said. ".. It's just to smear their names."

Lanford said he recalled one incident in which a paramedic was unjustly criticized, though he said he couldn't remember the details.

He said he'd be willing to release emergency responders' names if their supervisors determined they broke protocol or harmed a patient.

Rogers said attorneys for the Press Association, which represents newspapers throughout the state, were attempting to discuss the issue with Lanford on Wednesday.

The bill is expected to be discussed at a Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee hearing this morning.

It also was discussed during a hearing last week, Rogers said.

"Everyone was in agreement in the committee," he said. "... Everybody was happy with the bill until Lanford comes along."

Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, introduced the bill in December to open the records, which he has said were closed by mistake in a 2004 bill he sponsored that became law.

Peeler, who chairs the Senate Medical Affairs Committee, said he sponsored the earlier bill at the request of S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control officials, who told him the bill was intended to mirror federal patient privacy laws. Peeler has said he did not intend for the bill to keep information about EMS responses to emergencies off-limits to the public.

Though it took effect about five years ago, the law didn't become an issue until The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette requested ambulance response-time information last year from Beaufort County EMS.

The county denied the request and asked the S.C. Attorney General whether it was required to release the data.

An Attorney General opinion issued Aug. 19 said the law allows such information to be withheld from the public.

The State newspaper in Columbia also was denied access to EMS records this year. The city of Columbia said in October it could not release a 911 recording and an incident report about events surrounding the death of a 3-year-old boy who died in September. Rescue workers had delayed taking the boy to the hospital. Though officials have said the delay didn't contribute to the boy's death, criticism of the emergency crews' response continues.

An Island Packet review of eight states in the Southeast found that although state laws vary on the amount of information that can be released, none appears to have laws as restrictive as South Carolina's.

Opinion: Public has right, need to know
how EMS does its job
The State
2/11/10
IF FIREFIGHTERS show up at your house too late to keep it from burning down, you can get official records that show precisely when your neighbor called 911, when the fire trucks left the station and how long it took them to get to your house.

If the police officer doesn't arrive until after the robber has made his get-away, you can find out the same information. You can even get the officer's name.

If emergency medical technicians arrive too late, or if your child dies while the ambulance sits in your driveway waiting for a backup driver to show up, you are in the dark.

State law says it's none of your business how long it was between the time you called 911 and the ambulance headed for your house, which means it's none of your business whether 911 operators dropped the ball or EMS dropped the ball or no one dropped the ball.

It's none of your business how long the ambulance was tied up by bureaucratic rules.

It's none of your business who the emergency technicians were, which means it's none of your business whether they were rookies or veterans, or whether they had a history of arriving late.

In fact, you can't even get the raw data that would show average EMS response times, which local governments often use to determine how much public money to spend on staff and equipment.

If you think that's an outrage, you're right.

If you think it's just another example of the Legislature going out of its way to keep us in the dark about how our government works ... well, not so fast.

Senate Medical Affairs Chairman Harvey Peeler insists that he had no idea he was creating a blackout on public information about such clearly public matters when he authored a law in 2004 that the attorney general's office says makes it illegal to release incident reports, 911 recordings and "all" other information about emergency service calls.

Sen. Peeler had intended only to protect the privacy of patients, in order to comply with the federal HIPPA law, and he is trying to correct his error.

If you think correcting a clearly inadvertent error is a slam-dunk, you're wrong.

DHEC officials, who brought Sen. Peeler the language for the 2004 law and gave him no clue it went so far, see no problem with the veil of secrecy.

And the S.C. Emergency Medical Services Association is actively fighting to preserve at least part of its special exemption.

When the group's director spouted nonsense last week about the media wanting to dig up dirt on rescue workers, and then went on a tirade about his own (completely irrelevant) experiences with the media when he was a House member.

Sen. Peeler's panel sent the bill back to a subcommittee, which is scheduled to take it up this morning.

Hiding rescue workers' names is not the worst thing about this law. It is far, far worse that the law makes it impossible to judge how well our public servants perform their jobs either in individual cases or overall.

There is no justification for retaining that exemption, and if the Legislature doesn't lift it, then this will indeed be a case of our legislators deliberately hiding critical information about how our government works.

But here's the thing: There is no legitimate reason to hide the names of rescue workers - or any other public officials who might or might not be doing their jobs well. In fact, that information was available to the public until this past summer, when the attorney general was asked to review the law, and we're not aware of any problems it created.

And in a free society, you're supposed to have a very good reason to hide information from the public.

Post and Courier section to be reborn as magazine
2/11/10
The Post and Courier’s weekly entertainment section, Preview, will be reborn and expanded into a new weekly magazine in March.

Charleston Scene will be a print and online magazine, with full color and new features.

The goal was to make it a more viable entertainment source for our community. The new print product is expected to more than double in size. Content will include new columns, reader contributions, business features and expanded movie listings.

Current Preview Editor Marcus Amaker says the publication will be “something more fun, edgy and hip. Something that actually reflects our scene (pun intended).”

Charleston Scene’s Web site will have video, photos and multimedia.

Its debut is March 11 and will be distributed through racks, bars, restaurants, and stores.

Coupons make a comeback: redemption up 27%
2/11/10
Neiman Journalism Lab
My Laura McGann
Back in my college days, it only took a few Thursdays at the school paper to learn a newspaper-business lesson: Readers love coupons. Thursday was the day the UCSD Guardian had its package of deals ($1 off at Golden Spoon!), and issues flew off the racks.

But outside the world of undergrads hunting for a froyo deal, coupon use was already on the decline. Year-over-year since 1992, coupon redemption fell — until the fourth quarter of 2008, when things swung back. Both the number of coupons available and their redemption rates are now rising; from 2008 to 2009, redemption rose 27 percent.
I spoke with Matthew Tilley, director of marketing for Inmar, a company that handles the bulk of coupon processing in the U.S. He said more coupons means good news for newspapers. , overall, it’s good news for the newspaper business. “The predominant means for distribution of coupons is newspapers — and it’s growing.”

Inmar data says that 88.7 percent of all coupons appear in “free standing inserts” (FSI), the kind you typically find in your Sunday paper. From 2008 to 2009, the redemption rate for this kind of coupon jumped 36 percent. And of all coupons redeemed, 52.3 percent came from free-standing inserts.

(I asked Tilley to explain how FSI could make up almost 90 percent of all coupons but barely half of all coupons redeemed. He said redemption rates are skewed by coupons distributed near the point of sale — in-store coupons that appear next to or on a product, or those personalized coupons you receive at the supermarket register with your receipt.)

Internet coupons are on the rise, but they still represent only a tiny fraction of the market, less than half a percent. But of all coupons redeemed, they account for 1.5 percent. Redemption rates for Internet coupons are the fastest-growing in the business, up 263 percent from 2008 to 2009.