I’m just going to go ahead and say that the Business Connection event yesterday at The Clinton Chronicle was a huge success.
Lots of people attended our July 29 event, and we had some great networking going on. Plus, we had some really good wine.
Now, obviously, I don’t really KNOW if that was the case. It’s the peculiar plight of weekly newspapers - some of us anyway - that stuff that happens on a Tuesday night must be covered in the NEXT Wednesday newspaper (our deadline for this issue was 4 p.m. July 28) but in theory at least that gives us the chance to provide more context, and insight, into what happened.
Yeah, that’s it, Context and Insight.
In any event, in hindsight - or is it preview? - Thank You to everyone who wished us well at the July 29 Business Connection as we partnered with the Laurens County Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber uses these Business After Hours - sometimes Business Before Hours - Business Connection events to spotlight local Chamber members. Some of them - like Hoyt Hanvey - have an opening or a re-opening story to tell.
Some - like us - have been in the community a long time and just have a new look or a new focus to present to the community. The Chamber is a great partner to make both of those situations happen.
Pat and I appreciate everyone who came around to commemorate my 50th anniversary as a community journalist. Lots of my writings from Bishopville and Camden are lost to posterity (although they may be preserved in the state’s newspapers’ digital archive) but I was able to display a few of my writings from Newberry College, Greenwood, Newberry and Clinton. My work in Florence was not in the writing end - I worked the wire desk and did minimal writing, working the graveyard shift - and my first work in Greenwood also was on the wire desk. My second stint in Greenwood was as Regional Editor and I supervised the work of 8 reporters (I wasn’t a writer until three young men got trapped in the middle of the river at Ware Shoals and I was the only one available to cover it in the office at the time). The interesting thing about that second stint was on my first day, two Abbeville lawmen were killed by the Bixbys - during our budget meeting for the next day’s newspaper. Our reporter got on the scene first and was able to stay inside the police line for many hours over the next two days.
I was driving from Newberry to Greenwood at the time (in fact, the whole eight months I worked there) and, finally, the managing editor told me to just go home, there was nothing I could do as the siege played out. Later, I covered a court hearing related to the Bixbys, but that’s as close as I got to that story.
At their heart, newspapers are collaborations, and I am so lucky to be working with this young staff. Our Publisher Chris Patterson and our Reporter/Designer Victoria Steele were First Place winners in the SC Press’ most recent Palmy awards for advertising designs and an advertisers’ event. We have young employees in advertising and bookkeeping, Christen and Hunter, and that is an extension of newspapers-like-ours’ role in training young newspaper people. We train them - and the big newspapers take them, has always been “the way” but it doesn’t have to always be that way. You can make a career - and a good one - right here in Clinton.
Contact Vic MacDonald at 864-833-1900 or news@clintonchronicle.net
PS Thank you, Paula, you know who you are.
