Charleston-area residents are fortunate to have high-quality news outlets that produce interesting, compelling stories and help them figure out what’s going on throughout the region.
Excellence abounds. Just look at recent awards for news merit by the S.C. Press Association. In a first, the Charleston City Paper won the President’s Cup for Excellence recognizing it as the state’s top large weekly newspaper for 2023. Our photographers, reporters and designers won 35 awards, including 15 first places as well as special top awards for assertive coverage and design.
Just down the street, The Post and Courier took home the cup as best large daily newspaper, winning 89 awards in the contest. And across the Cooper River, The Daniel Island News won 25 awards, including the cup for being best mid-sized weekly newspaper.
In short, that means residents in just one area of the state enjoy top-quality news content on a regular basis from South Carolina’s best large weekly, best medium-sized weekly and best large daily newspaper. Wow.
The Lowcountry also is blessed with top-notch news coverage from three television stations which win quality awards consistently. In recent years, television news coverage has amped up providing area residents with original reporting that keeps people informed about what’s going on in local governments, schools, workplaces and homes.
All of this is extremely healthy and vital for our democracy to remain strong. Voters need to have solid reporting to hold officials accountable and make sure they’re living up to the trust put in them. Taxpayers need good information to make sure leaders are being responsible with public dollars. All residents need reliable news so they can make informed choices at the polls on the direction for the community.
Unfortunately, Charleston’s healthy environment for news and interesting stories often doesn’t stretch to other parts of the state, particularly in rural areas where weekly newspapers struggle to make ends meet. Unlike Georgia, which has more than a dozen counties without any newspaper at all, South Carolina fares much better with only Allendale County without a weekly newspaper.
But because these small newspapers don’t have resources for more reporting, the Charleston City Paper, in coordination with grants from the nonprofit S.C. Institute for Independent Journalism, this year opened a Statehouse bureau in Columbia to do two things. First, it is, through its statehousereport.com weekly newsletter on policy and politics, providing more unique reporting related to Charleston about what’s happening in state government. And second — something important for weeklies — it is starting to provide statewide stories to news weeklies across South Carolina at no cost to allow them to expand their coverage and localize state news stories.
We believe we have a fundamental civic responsibility to generate more state news coverage that will give a boost to our democracy, here and in South Carolina’s other 45 counties. We’re excited about what’s ahead.
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