10 papers died in S.C. last year; Post and Courier looks at one that's hanging on and at a town that lost one, its 'glue'

The Observer operated from this building in Ware Shoals. (Photo by Andrew J. Whitaker, Post and Courier)

The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, began an ambitious, year-long project in February called "Uncovered," partnering with rural papers across the state to unearth corruption. Those rural papers play a critical role in their communities, but many have uncertain futures, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Stephen Hobbs report for the paper. They illustrate the trend with a spotlight on the Union County News, a weekly that serves a county of nearly 30,000 near Greenville, and The Observer in Ware Shoals, a town of 2,200, also in the state's northwestern quadrant.

"In a day when partisan warfare and Twitter taunts can define the day’s public discourse, local newspapers like this one provide something else. They bind people with the glue of shared community," Hawes and Hobbs report. "Obituaries tell readers who died in town. Legal notices alert them to public meetings and court proceedings. Sports stories announce whose kid caught the big pass Friday night. Or who fumbled it. Yet, increasingly, that community glue is drying up."

Post and Courier chart: Two towns in story; papers closed in 2020

The Union County News's chief competitor, The Union Times, was one of 10 South Carolina papers that closed in 2020. "Familiar antagonists — financial stressors, professional moves and retiring overseers — threw most of them over the precipice of viability. Their closures cut news coverage for people living in every corner of the state," Hawes and Hobbs report. "The glue that is lost doesn’t only bind readers. Without journalists shining light on public officials’ actions, corruption and misdeeds can thrive."

The Union County News is doing okay these days, but its two employees, Editor Graham Williams and Publisher Anna Brown, are getting on in years and don't have obvious successors. What will happen to the community when they retire and no one else will run the paper? One possible outcome might be seen in Ware Shoals. The local paper, The Observer, closed in late 2020 after Publisher Dan Branyon was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and he and his wife Faye could no longer keep it going.

A local funeral director told the Post and Courier that Faye Branyon kept local officials on their toes and called them out when necessary. Faye is no longer covering town-council and school-board meetings, and there is no one else to do it in the community of about 2,000. Lamar Smith, 90, lived in Ware Shoals for more than 65 years and kept track of friends and family through The Observer. "When the paper shut down,” he told Hawes and Hobbs, "it seemed like the whole town shut down with it."

When local papers shutter, it hurts communities in many different ways, including increased corporate misbehavior. "In 2018, researchers found that newspaper closures led to higher borrowing costs for local governments, plus increased taxes and deficits due to the loss of a community watchdog," Hawes and Hobbes report. "Jobs vanish, too. Since 2004, about half of print journalists have lost their posts, according to 'Vanishing Newspapers,' a research project at the University of North Carolina. But so much of what is lost cannot be calculated in jobs, tax dollars or corruption. It is measured in glue."