The State, Columbia, S.C., C. Grant Jackson Column: Editors See Bright Future for The State

By C. Grant Jackson, The State, Columbia, S.C.

Mar. 14–The best way to know what is coming for The State newspaper is to look at The McClatchy Co.’s other acquisitions, said Melanie Sill, executive editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh.

McClatchy did not come “with some kind of cookie cutter approach wanting all the papers to be the same,” said Sill, who was project editor when the newspaper was bought in 1995.

The News & Observer had undertaken a number of significant changes, she said. McClatchy “did not come into Raleigh and say we are going to clean house and throw people out and all that,” Sill said.

“If you look at McClatchy papers, they are very different from one another. What is consistent is their commitment to excellence,” she said.

The changes McClatchy made when it acquired The (Rock Hill) Herald in 1990 were “virtually all positive,” said Terry Plumb, the newspaper’s executive editor. Plumb had joined the Herald three years earlier.

McClatchy was quick to respond to a push into the Rock Hill market by The Charlotte Observer, Plumb said.

When The Herald switched to a morning paper in 1988, the Observer had opened a bureau in Rock Hill and launched a daily Rock Hill edition. The Herald had not really beefed up in response to the threat, Plumb said.

“When McClatchy came in, I actually got chewed out for not asking for more people, and so I did and they gave them to me.”

McClatchy has been more supportive than he would have expected most newspaper companies to be, Plumb said.

Sill echoed Plumb’s sentiment that McClatchy is quick to respond to competition. The News & Observer started a community paper last year in Durham, N.C., she said, to compete with The Durham Herald Sun.

The McClatchy acquisition of Knight Ridder will have significant impact in South Carolina.

McClatchy will now own seven daily papers in the state. Charles Bierbauer, dean of USC’s College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, said that should enhance all those papers’ importance to newsmakers and make the newsmakers more responsive to those papers.

Shirley Staples Carter, director of the USC School of Journalism and Mass Communications, said her first concern is that “the quality of the journalism that we have come to expect from The State is maintained.”

Mark E. Lett, executive editor of The State, said news of the McClatchy acquisition was “clarifying and energizing.

“This enables us to proceed with plans for improving The State in a variety of ways in the months ahead,” Lett said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The State, Columbia, S.C.

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