AIKEN STANDARD ARTICLE
By Michael W. Gibbons
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The annual release of the state PACT scores is eagerly anticipated by parents and educators. The scores the barometer of how the state’s public school students are faring. It is, without question, front page news.
It was only a few hours before the daily editions of the Aiken Standard would begin filling the familiar blue boxes around town, touting the scores. Then, everything changed. In the blink of an eye, everything changed.
Editor Jeff Wallace was in his office, preparing for the review of the day’s edition, when City Editor Tim O’Briant approached him. An airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. This was only the beginning of a national nightmare.
“At that point, I didn’t think anybody understood what had happened,” Wallace recalled.
Shortly thereafter, a second plane. Then a third. And a fourth. What had been front page lead only an hour before suddenly seemed as far from front page news as the sports or comics.
“I remember Tim saying, ‘We’re under attack.’ It was actually the headline we used – ‘Under Attack,’” Wallace remembers, stroking his peppery-gray beard with a cruel mix of both nostalgia and sadness.
In fact, it was the headline that would scream from the top fold of the Aiken Standard on September 11, 2001, only hours after the nation was plunged into the horrors of terrorism once reserved for far-away lands.
That, Wallace says, is one of his best – and simultaneously worst – memories as Editor of the daily afternoon paper. The best was because of his staff’s performance after being called from the newsroom television, where the events were unfolding. “I told them, ‘We’re putting out a newspaper,’ and turned it off.” In short-time, an entirely new edition was assembled, complete with local angle stories on the tragedy. The worst is obvious.
IN THE BEGINNING
The first newspaper in Aiken was but a speck in time. The Aiken Telegraph and Commercial Advertiser, made its debut in 1835, a good two years ahead of the invention of telegraphy, an impressive feat in and of itself. Only two copies are known to exist, and the early paper’s lifespan is unclear, although it was no doubt fleeting.
Aiken went without a newspaper for nearly three decades. A less-than-renowned journalistic achievement – The Comet – flashed through the area in 1866. A year later, the Aiken Press made its debut. As it turned out, the $3 subscription fee would barely cover the majority of the life of the Press.
For the next 20 years, Aiken would see a constant changing of the guard of the journalism business. Owners came and went, and newspapers were born and died. By 1892, three newspapers had established sound footing in the area – The Recorder, the Journal and Review, and the Aiken Times. Shortly thereafter, the Aiken Sentinel joined the fray. And, in 1915, Walter E. Duncan saw the birth of the town’s newest weekly newspaper, the Aiken Standard.
Duncan sold the Standard in 1934 to Benjamin and Annie Howell King. A year later, they acquired the Journal and Review, which was combined with the Standard to form the Aiken Standard and Review, the modern day parent of what the Aiken Standard is today.
Associate Editor Don Law, who joined the paper’s staff in 19XX still comes in daily to the paper, despite having retired XX years ago. “I pay them to let me come in and work,” he jokes, tugging at the bill of his ballcap.
Mr. Law recounts Mrs. King’s guidance of the paper as being one of high standards and responsibility.
“She was very much community oriented. She didn’t allow cigarette or tobacco ads.” And her legacy has not been forgotten. “I think we inherited that, and I hope we’ve continued it. And I hope we’ve improved on it, too.”
The newspaper remained a weekly until 1952. The addition of the Savannah River Plant brought unmatched growth to the area. With that growth came similar business opportunities for the Standard and Review, which expanded to a Monday-to-Friday publication schedule.
The current Aiken Standard was born in the winter of 1968 when the Charleston-based Evening Post Publishing Company purchased the newspaper from Mrs. King.
Sam Cothran was named publisher of the new daily. His undertaking would prove to be a monumental one. The offices were housed next to what is now the Hotel Aiken on Richland Avenue, with a small antiquated press machine and a single news reporter/photographer representing the staff.
Mr. Cothran set about to change that. First and foremost, a new production facility was needed. In seemingly record time, the new Aiken Standard offices moved into its new home on Rutland Drive, where it is headquartered today. Along with the new facilities, came new faces, in the form of news reporters and an advertising department. On December 15, the first afternoon edition of the Aiken Standard rolled off the presses, a schedule it has known since. The Standard was maturing into the newspaper Aikenites know today.
The newspaper had long been involved in the community. Under Mr. Cothran, the Standard began to take on the role as community leader as well. One of the most influential times for the paper came in 1973, when talk of a new city hospital began to swell.
As editorial leanings began to favor a private hospital, public sentiment began to sway in the opposite direction. The Standard was facing one its first major battles.
For Mr. Cothran, the decision to support a private organization came at the agony of an Aiken Standard pressman. The young worker was going about his daily tasks, when fashions of the day became his tormenter. He sported long hair, flowing locks that were a delightful enticement to the massive rollers of the pres machine. As his hair became entwined in the machine, he instinctively reached inside to free himself. The vice-like grip of the rollers trapped his arm, crushing it. Only through disassembly of the press could the young pressman be freed. The concerned publisher made his way to the hospital, and quickly came to the realization that Aiken needed more.
“Here was this man who was suffering terrible agony of a result of this, and they had him out in a gurney in the hall, and people were bumping into the gurney, coughing on him. If nothing else had ever convinced me to get better medical facilities here, that did,”
But it was not on mere emotion that Mr. Cothran brought forth the opinion that a private hospital would benefit Aiken. He met with the representatives of Health Corporation of America (HCA), the group that would eventually construct Aiken Regional Medical Centers.
“I went over and had talks with these people on more than one occasion, saw what they were doing, tried to understand how it might affect this community. I was sold on them. I thought they were going to do a first class job, and I think they did.”
The Standard’s current Publisher, Scott Hunter, was a sports reporter at the time. He recalls a sharply divided community on the issue of the future of Aiken’s healthcare. More importantly, however, he recalls the Standard sticking strongly to an issue for the betterment of the community, and working to diffuse some of the misinformation that was swirling through Aiken.
“There was a real controversy about that. Many people thought that a private hospital would just gouge the public, which has proved to just not be true,” Mr. Hunter said.
During the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the Standard’s viewpoints continued to grow stronger and louder, and with each passing year, they continued to gain more influence. Mr. Cothran recalls for many years a public push for the addition of a roadway through a particularly well-known Aiken stronghold.
“People early on felt like Hitchcock Woods should allow a four-lane highway through it. It was just people feeling they needed to get home for the first cocktail a little sooner, and they needed to go through Hitchcock Woods because it was the most direct route. And we just held out on that, because if you lose it, you’ll never get it back, and it will never be the same. And the newspaper tried to treat it as sacrosanct.”
TODAY’S STANDARD
With a circulation of 14,000, the Standard has settled into its niche as the community crier for the county. The newspaper holds a unique position, and with it a unique responsibility. It must be community informant, but it must also be community conscience.
“On one level, it’s a reflection of what the community is, and on another, we try to guide what the community can and maybe should be,” Mr. Wallace said.
Indeed, like any paper, there is the responsibility to report the news, be it good or bad. But in a small, close-knit community, there is also the requisite need for guidance on key issues.
For the editors of the Standard, the opinion pages represent not only the thoughts and feelings of a few individuals. It must also be a thought out address of the issues, and how they may impact the community long-term. These are issues that can make lasting impressions on the people and the places of Aiken, so no editorial decision is made without consideration.
And although the Standard can serve as a guiding force of opinion, that is a responsibility inherent with its main mission.
“The thing that we strive to do better than anybody else is to have local news, about local people and local issues,” Wallace said.
Unfortunately, that can also make for a challenging daily grind of compilation. While the Standard does rely on wire stories for some news – in particular national news – there is only one source for local stories – the seven reporters whom Wallace sends out daily to beat the bushes for the next Aiken-centric headline.
“You’ve got to make the effort each day to go and find out what is going on in your community. More thought has to go into it, and more effort on the part of your people.”
But that does not necessarily mean a breaking news story on education or a riveting crime drama unfolding in our backyards. “What are people interested in? What are people talking about?” is the question Wallace uses as his measuring stick for story-worthiness.
When the attacks of Sept. 11 were unfolding, it was the only discussion being held in Aiken, and thus it dominated the front page. However, it is sometimes the lighter distractions that occupy our public awareness. As the release of the Spiderman movie reached a fever pitch, Americans had turned their interests to escapist fare, leading to a front-page story on the legions of fans waiting hours to see the flavor-of-the-month pop sensation. News, it turns out, is all relative.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
The future of news, many would have you believe, is electronic. For the Standard, the future is only partially electronic.
www.aikenstandard.com went live on XXXXX, and is updated daily with a smattering of the day’s events, along with a community calendar and other static information. Wallace sees the website as a companion to the primary product, the paper-based Standard.
“The paper version will be here for at least the foreseeable future.”
Regardless of the source, the overall purpose will remain the same.
“Some businesses move into a community and they are there just to ply their trade. We see ourselves as part of this community,” Mr. Wallace said.
Mr. Hunter insists that a healthy dose of change must be added to the mix. Such recent changes include a shift from the physical size of the paper to the addition of such popular features as the Talk Back section and the Portraits of the Past. Both sections are based on reader submissions, and can only survive with reader interest and involvement.
“We’re trying to allow our readers to feel more a part of the paper,” he said.
And what will be the next big change? Mr. Hunter maintains there is nothing in particular that he is waiting to unveil. The changes evolve and appear over time. The Aiken Standard is, in fact, a newspaper. But Mr. Hunter feels tasked with the accountability for providing more than news.
“I tend to think of us as being in the information business, rather than the news business.”
Some days the information is good news. Other days it is a national tragedy. Either way, the Standard’s sole goal is to present information on whatever topic the community wants to know about.
As he considers the question of what his paper’s responsibility is, Mr. Hunter gazes at the ceiling thoughtfully and sums up his business and his goal, and that of the newspaper he helms.
“We have a responsibility to not be something that our community isn’t.”