South Carolina newspapers evolve a new paradigm to survive

a study by Northwestern University tells us the United States is losing two newspapers every week a sobering statistic not without consequences senior contributor Ted Koppel takes us to South Carolina where some papers are finding a new way forward the historic City of Charleston South Carolina is home to the oldest Daily Newspaper in the South back in the days of the Louisiana Purchase when Napoleon was making news it was reported right here the original newspaper began in 1802. that's amazing 221 years these days Pierre Manigault owns the paper which is now called the Post and Courier he's the latest in a long line my great-grandfather bought into it in 1896 making his the fourth generation now to own the paper you haven't heard Pierre but newspapers are done they're finished I've heard the rumor but instead of cutting back Pierre Manigault is Bucking the trend hiring more staff expanding digitally across the state and investing heavily in of all things a state-of-the-art printing press family ownership means he can do more or less what he wants are you really in it anymore to make money no no the the short answer to that is no this is not the business to make money in it once was as you well know these prices printed money but it's a different world one in which an estimated 70 million Americans now live in what's come to be known as a News desert the counties in yellow have just one newspaper remaining those in red have none what happens in those communities absent a source of reliable local news and scrutiny of local officials can lead to the spread of disinformation and Corruption we see what happens when communities lose their newspapers because it's happening all around us I think it's very important to have not just a newspaper but a very good newspaper here in South Carolina 10 local newspapers folded their print editions back in 2020 alone and even among the ones that survive many are shoestring operations in cities like Chester a former textile Hub that hasn't quite recovered from hard Economic Times the weekly newspaper is the news and reporter and one half of its reporting staff is editor Travis Jenkins myself and my reporter Brian Garner we're it and what do you cover everything having to do with Chester County so literally if you show up at our office and say hey I just caught a 60 pound catfish would you take a picture of it put it in the paper we absolutely do it but then we also kind of pride ourselves on doing more deep dig heavy lift investigative pieces that a lot of papers our size aren't able to do anymore with the County Supervisor indicted for trafficking meth trafficking myth yes the sheriff is indicted and removed on corruption charges a councilman is removed from office by a judge for having to pass criminal record he didn't disclose how do you have the time to do that it's difficult head 40 miles south and you'll come to the small town of Blythewood that's Barbara ball she owns the local weekly paper the voice of Blythewood she manages the paper writes for the paper how are you papers yep and that's her delivering the voice to businesses around town Barbara most Publishers have got someone to do this kind of thing for right your vast staff is not available I'm pretty much the staff The family pitches in Her husband Keith was up a good part of the night getting the paper ready for distribution Her daughter Ashley is the paper's designer And Rufus Jones the former mayor of nearby Ridgeway gets a small stipend to deliver copies of Ball's other paper in neighboring Fairfield County It just gets me out of the house What is it you find in this newspaper that you don't find in The New York Times? I prefer this paper because it's the truth and it's what's happening in the county That's why most people get this paper you won't be surprised to learn that Barbara Bball does not do it for the money but sometimes out of the blue she gets some very generous donations I will get checks from people I've gotten a thousand dollars really I think most people realize that we don't make a lot of money we don't make any money and I think a lot of people think if we weren't here they might not know what was going on coming up with the money to pay for real reporting that's a problem they all have in common from the small rural communities to the big city paper in Charleston owned by Pierre Manigault newspapers were a great vehicle for advertising that's gone so now you have to go back to what the roots of Journalism are and that's content and information that people can't get anywhere else do you actually think that anybody cares anymore I think they do how do you know well we opened up a fund through the Community Foundation where people could pay for The Newsroom expenses associated with our investigative journalism we set a goal of a hundred thousand dollars in a hundred days and we raised about five times that five hundred thousand dollars from readers who wanted to support the work of award-winning investigative journalists in this Newsroom led by Glenn Smith the special project editor he has a team of five reporters including lead project reporter Tony bartleme in 2021 it occurred to Tony and Glenn that they could use a part of the donated reporting fund to help some of those small struggling newspapers in other parts of South Carolina they could collaborate to everyone's Mutual benefit we actually spent some time working on a pitch remember we wrote that out we came in with a lot of humility and said hey we're putting together this project we're calling it uncovered and what we like to do is investigative stories and you can collaborate with us if you can and if you want to Travis Jenkins from the Chester news and reporter was the first reporter they reached out to Tony Bartelme told me hey we're about to drop the story and we do mention Chester sheriff and I don't want you to feel like we're invading your Turf trying to Bigfoot you so here's literally everything I've got from where we've investigated Chester sheriff and later on when the sheriff was going to trial we had some trouble Staffing that trial and he was going to that we shared reporting on that and the pieces that we produced were so much better for the collaboration the uncovered project ultimately involved 19 Community newspapers across the state two papers have since folded the stories ran in Charleston's post in Korea and were available to all of the local Partners including the voice of blythewood Barbara ball her local school superintendent had basically taken over the narrative attack I'm not going to deal with you she wanted to see his financial spending records it came to us some governments are just great they're very open and then there's others that do have things to hide and it's very hard to get information she'd been quoted I think it was 300 for these records and she didn't have that and so we offered to pay that and they ended up just giving it to us when we got behind her and got a really good story out of it what is it they provide other than money and muscle for our story to be on the front page of the Charleston Post and Courier was huge it substantiated that we're a good newspaper that we turn out good work I don't know some of these towns I know nothing about them but these people do so why don't you take the Best of Both Worlds put them together we all get content raise the alarm and and hopefully make our state a better place in the last few years our corruption work has exposed a half a dozen public officials from sheriffs to prosecutors it's triggered more than 10 State investigations and audits more than a hundred stories that have exposed conflicts of interest and cozy deals it's really that cumulative effort that ends up creating that culture of deterrence that prevents future misconduct and readers seem willing to pay for that extra effort over the past two years Pierre Manigault's Post and Courier has raised more than 1.7 million dollars to fund their investigative work and local Partnerships 10 years from now our newspaper is going to be a thing of the past time will tell I think that there's a second life for newspapers I think that we'll survive this it's it's an evolution and newspapers just need to evolve to the new digital world and I think we're well on our way to doing that Travis Jenkins has a different measure of success his readers can renew an annual subscription of his paper for 29.99 somebody took the time to take this mailer one of them returned the offer was an editorial comment in between the spaces on our little mailer it said no I do not want to and I'll have to do a little judicious self-editing here I do not want to subscribe to your bleeping paper y'all are the most up in everybody's bleeping business newspaper I've ever seen in my whole bleep in life didn't sign it didn't put a return address but I wish he had because I wanted to write him and say man thank you that's the best compliment anybody's ever paid us

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 204,796

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, south carolina, 2020, newspapers, investigation, coverage, ted koppel, journalist

Id: rMhu9D0dTS4

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023