Mark Lett to retire as executive editor/VP of The State

​Mark E. Lett is retiring as executive editor and vice president of The State newspaper, publisher Sara Johnson Borton announced Monday.

Lett, executive editor since 1998 and a newspaperman for 50 years, met with staff members Monday to thank them for outstanding performance and to share his optimism for the work ahead.

"Our profession has a rich and valuable history in this community," Lett, 64, told staffers. "I've seen first-hand your seriousness of purpose and your commitment to the core values that guide the best of our work.

"I could not be more confident about the role The State will play to inform and connect the citizens of Columbia and South Carolina."

Borton said the newsroom under Lett's leadership was a standard-setter for enterprise reporting, editorial commentary, visual journalism and coverage of breaking news, politics, public policy and sports.

Among those, public service reporting that exposed:

▪ Failings inside DHEC, the state's public health agency

▪ Staggering costs for recovering, preserving and promoting the CSS Hunley, a Civil War submarine

▪ Botched management of a Richland County election

▪ Unsafe levels of lead in a Lower Richland water supply

▪ Nationally respected sports coverage, distinguished by the highly successful GoGamecocks.com lineup of offerings presented online, in newsprint and magazines. Among the highlights: Comprehensive coverage and captivating visual presentation of USC's baseball and basketball national championships.

▪ Award-winning photography and newspaper design, as well as pace-setting use of online video journalism at thestate.com and GoGamecocks.com

▪ Distinguished politics and government reporting, including authoritative coverage of South Carolina's wrenching debates over the Confederate flag, failing schools, video poker and a governor who went AWOL before returning to Columbia to confess his marital infidelity.

"Mark's legacy as an editor is exemplary," Borton said. "His leadership nurtured the careers of many journalists and in an atmosphere distinguished by an unwavering commitment to quality journalism."

Lett began his newspaper career in a working-class suburb of Detroit as a teen-age "copy boy" at his hometown weekly newspaper, running errands, filling glue pots and — on occasion — cutting the publisher's grass. He became a reporter, starting with assignments to write wedding engagements and school notes, then covering police, courts, local government and sports.

He parlayed a college journalism internship into a full-time reporting position at The Detroit News, where he was a reporter, auto-labor writer, city editor, state editor, national editor, projects editor and assistant managing editor for business, sports, national and Washington Bureau news. During several decades at five newspapers in Detroit, Pittsburgh and Gary, Ind., Lett wrote or edited coverage of the disappearance of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, the bankruptcy of Chrysler Corp., a baseball World Series, a U.S. Open golf championship, a handful of presidential elections, a triple beheading, a crippling strike by employees at two newspapers and the dismaying decline of Detroit's economy.

"I've had the good fortune to work with many, many outstanding journalists whose passion and intelligence have enriched their newspaper, their communities and the lives of their colleagues, including my own," Lett said. "Nowhere is that more true than The State newsroom."

This story was originally published July 24, 2017 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Mark Lett to retire as executive editor/VP of The State."