The State’s Travis Bland named SC Journalist of the Year; newspaper wins 30+ awards

Travis Bland, a public safety reporter at The State Media Co., has been named South Carolina Daily Journalist of the Year for 2020 by the South Carolina Press Association.

The State also has received the Press Association’s Montgomery/Shurr FOI Award for the newsroom’s legislative earmarks series, which exposed a secret process that state lawmakers use to funnel millions of dollars to their districts. The award recognizes a news organization that “exercised unusual diligence and/or courage in furthering access to public information.”

The honors were announced Friday afternoon during the Press Association’s annual awards banquet. The event normally is held in the spring but was delayed for the second straight year because of the pandemic. Also for the second straight year, the event was held virtually.

Bland was honored for his work on several major stories in 2020. They included a series about Brooks Martin, a 21-month-old boy who died from injuries suffered in an Irmo day care; coverage of people impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic; and protests in Columbia after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“We’re all so proud of the work Travis has done,” Brian Tolley, editor of The State, said. “When you look back at all the stories he did in 2020, you see depth, versatility, impact and also a level of care and empathy that is striking.”

The Brooks Martin series, which Bland reported along with then-colleague Isabella Cueto, raised questions about how the boy was injured and about the police investigation that followed. During the pandemic, Bland wrote about problems faced by renters who lost jobs and about workers at a West Columbia chicken processing plant concerned about work conditions there.

Bland, a Columbia native, also raised questions about whether police or protesters initiated confrontations on the second day of the George Floyd protests in May 2020.

The State’s earmarks series showed that lawmakers secretly funneled millions of dollars each year to pet projects in their home districts.

There are no State House votes on these hidden earmarks. No line items in the state budget to review. No list of projects that a taxpayer can get. And certainly no document that reveals which lawmakers requested which earmark.

So Andrew Caplan and other State Media reporters had to do the digging themselves, sending out more than 70 public records requests to 13 state agencies, the S.C. Senate and the House of Representatives to get the information. They then cataloged each one of the earmarks for the past five fiscal years and created a first-of-its-kind searchable database for readers.

Lastly, the newspaper held lawmakers accountable with hard-hitting stories, detailing how the earmarks were quietly being spent on questionable projects. Influential lawmakers such as Rep. Murrell Smith of Sumter County, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, received millions for his district, while poor counties got nothing.

As a result of the newspaper’s work, the Senate has enacted a rule change, requiring additional transparency while the House has begun to post additional earmark information online. More work is needed but it’s more transparent than South Carolinians have received in years.

In all, The State’s reporters, visual journalists, designers and digital staff took home 30 first-, second- and third-place awards in the annual S.C. Press Association newspaper contest, encompassing work published from December 2019 to November 2020.

First place

Top honors were given to the entire staff for election and political coverage and for breaking news reporting on the violence that erupted in downtown Columbia after the George Floyd protests.

Other first-place awards were given to:

▪ Bland and Cueto won in the series of articles category for their project, “Losing Brooks: Did an accident kill their baby boy 10 years ago? His parents believe it was homicide.”

▪ Bristow Marchant won for his news obituary, “Columbia couple did ‘everything’ to avoid coronavirus. They died just hours apart.”

▪ Sarah Ellis and Maayan Schechter won for enterprise reporting for their article, “5 years after Emanuel AME massacre: what’s really changed in South Carolina.”

▪ Sammy Fretwell won in the reporting in-depth category for his story, “A flesh-eating bacteria lurking in the ocean is killing people in the Carolinas,” which was done in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina and the Columbia Journalism School and the Center for Public Integrity.

▪ Michael Lananna won for sports enterprise reporting for his article, “This former South Carolina football player aims to change policing from the inside.”

▪ Photojournalist Joshua Boucher won for general news photo for his photo of state Rep. Marvin Pendarvis, kneeling in the House antechamber to mark the eight minutes and 46 seconds that a police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck.

▪ Photojournalist Tracy Glantz won for spot news photo, capturing Dawn Bradley standing between protesters and Columbia police officers; and Glantz also won for news video accompanying the series of articles ”Losing Brooks.”

▪ Social media gurus Nikki Naik and The State staff won for the newspaper’s use of social media and Schechter won for her individual use of social media.

▪ The State sports staff won for single sports page design.

Second place

▪ John Monk won for his obituary, “Edward Sloan, SC citizen watchdog who fought government Goliaths and won, dies at 91.”

▪ Bland won in the beat reporting category for his coverage of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.

▪ Ellis won in the business beat reporting category for her coverage of retail and restaurants opening and surviving in a pandemic.

▪ Marchant won in the short story competition, for his article, “Lexington couple has celebrates Valentine’s Day for 12 years at the same Waffle House.”

▪ Ben Breiner won in the spot sports story category, for his article, “King Dixon, former South Carolina football star, AD and ‘war hero,’ has died.”

▪ Boucher won for sports feature photo depicting Malcolm Wright watching Ridge View play Myrtle Beach and in the news video category for “Crystal Priester remembers her mother Sandra Priester.”

▪ Tracy Glantz won in the pictorial category for her photos of Columbia-area law enforcement pushing back protesters and for her sports video of the “Benedict football team rises early to start the season late due to the coronavirus.”

Third place

The State staff, third place for COVID-19 coverage and innovation for Breaking Point: Tackling Systemic Racism in South Carolina; Emily Bohatch, third place for government beat reporting and profile feature writing; Lucas Daprile, third place for education beat reporting; The State’s sports staff, third place for single sports page design; Lou Bezjak, third place for spot sports story; Matt Connolly, third place for sports feature story.

This story was originally published October 29, 2021 at 4:57 PM.