Does Nikki maintain her Facebook page herself? I suspect so…

Someone speculated earlier that Nikki Haley doesn’t maintain her Facebook page herself. I suspect that she does. Or at least that some of the posts, or status updates, or whatever you want to call them (I’m a Twitter man, and get impatient with Facebook) are written by her personally.

They are so emotional. And they are so carelessly written that I hate to think anyone was paid to produce them — unless the rough edges are part of the service being provided, to add authenticity.

For instance, there’s this:

SC Law Enforcement Dir. Chief Keel responding to The State Newspaper: “I have expressed my concerns, as of yesterday, that publication of info regarding minor children of elected officials creates problems for State Law Enforcement and its efforts to provide security for the children of this governor or any governor. In my 30 yrs plus of experience at SLED, the security or activities of minor children of elected officials is something that the media in general has taken a “hands off” approach to in reporting except as released by the elected official’s office.”

First, one wonders what she’s on about. I didn’t see anything in the paper about her daughter before this appears. That sort of airing of a background battle as though everyone knows what’s going on is so off, so unprofessional, that it really feels like it’s coming from her.

Also, it follows her pattern of embarrassing her appointees by enlisting them in her personal political battles. I feel for Mark Keel.

It’s probably a reference to this thing Will Folks wrote about. I suppose The State was working on the story (the MSM have this quaint habit of confirming things with on-the-record sources, which makes them lag the blogosphere), and that freaked Nikki out in a way that Will’s post did not.

There was an earlier post on the same subject that was more emotional, and blasted The State as a worthless, “biased” entity that was persecuting Nikki’s family, and that one really felt like her. Here it is:

Scrutiny of me comes with the territory of being governor. I expect it. But it’s a sad day for journalism in South Carolina when The State newspaper goes after my 14 year old daughter. Public officials have a right to expect that their minor children are off limits from political opponents and even from biased media outlets like The State. Its disgusting. Shame on them.

If a paid staffer wrote that for her, then I’m embarrassed for that person, too.

71 thoughts on “Does Nikki maintain her Facebook page herself? I suspect so…

  1. Brad

    Can you IMAGINE the awkwardness of the conversation between the overwrought governor and the law enforcement professional that led to that Keel statement?

  2. Brad

    Oh, and there is STILL no sign of any story on the subject from The State, which makes her continued hammering on the subject, and blaming The State for it, more and more bizarre.

  3. j

    Per Sic Willie: http://www.fitsnews.com/2012/07/17/state-house-gift-shop-hires-nikki-haleys-daughter-2/

    “S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley’s teenage daughter has been hired by the S.C. Department of Parks Recreation and Tourism (SCPRT) to work in the gift shop of the South Carolina State House, multiple sources have confirmed to FITS — making her the latest member of the governor’s family to earn a paycheck at the taxpayer’s expense.

    Rena Haley, 14, was hired earlier this summer by the agency — which is part of Haley’s cabinet. She will reportedly work an estimated thirty hours per week at the gift shop. In fact many of the gift shop’s current staff have been forced to cut back on their hours to accomodate the schedule for Haley’s daughter.

    Sources tell FITS that the directive to hire Haley’s daughter came directly from SCPRT director Duane Parrish – who previously hired the wife of Haley’s chief of staff to an “up to $50,000 a year” part-time position within the agency… Rena Haley has been in the news once before — when her mother falsely posted on Facebook that she had won a middle school beauty pageant (Rena Haley was first runner-up in the pageant).”

  4. Doug Ross

    How much of your waking day do you spend obsessing on every word that comes out of Nikki Haley’s mouth/keyboard?

    Do you know for sure that The State did not contact her office about her daughter? Seems like you could find that out pretty quickly, right?

    I suppose you’d prefer she runs everything she posts to Facebook through an editorial review process. She’s human. She’s a woman and a mother. Mothers sometimes get emotional.

  5. Brad

    To answer your question, Doug, no time at all. Since you use the word “obsessing.”

    And you misunderstand me… I assume that The State DID make an inquiry. What’s bizarre here is all this PUBLIC complaining about something that the entity being complained about has not made public.

    And j — yes, that’s the item I linked to above.

  6. Brad

    I continue to marvel at Doug when he complains whenever I write something, on a blog about SC politics, about the most prominent politician in the state.

    It’s weird that he thinks it’s weird that there are frequent references to that person here.

    Let’s see what happened in this instance… I was following Adam Beam’s Tweets about what the Legislature was up to this week (gasp! I just realized! The Legislature spent the WHOLE WEEK “obsessing” about what the governor had done! What’s wrong with them?), and one of them mentioned that Joel Lourie had taken Nikki to task over her Facebook feed.

    I followed the link provided, and saw those critical responses that I wrote about earlier. I also saw the weird first post about this subject, and made a note to look into it later.

    This morning, I got around to that, and by that time there were TWO posts about it, and the gov had actually wasted the time of the head of SLED in the matter. And there was STILL no story from The State.

    Which is bizarre behavior on the part of the governor of this or any other state, and a highly eligible subject for commentary, by any reasonable standard.

    One more thing you should note, Doug: This governor has made it clear since early in her term that she considers this medium, Facebook, to be a preferred method of communicating with the voters as governor, as opposed to the “biased media.” Which makes what she posts there of considerable relevance to anyone who would keep up with what’s going on with the governor.

    Of course, you think it strange that a political blog would keep up with what’s going on with the governor, but I still have trouble following your logic.

  7. Brad

    Just to make a point… You want to know what I obsess about?

    My youngest daughter is touring Europe this summer. Yesterday, we heard that she was sick. I hardly slept last night; I was extremely worried about her being in a strange place where she doesn’t speak the language with God only knows what sickness. I must have gotten up and paced the floor five times during the night, because the last word sounded bad, and my wife wouldn’t let me try to call her because she was trying to rest.

    I did not get up this morning and write about that. No, I wrote something about a political figure in our state. But I assure you, I know all about being an anxious parent. And I know the difference between that and how a public figure should conduct himself, or herself, publicly. Two different subjects.

    In Nikki’s case, it’s a little hard to separate her understandable unease at having her daughter be the subject of a news story (even if the news story hasn’t yet appeared), from the fact that her very young daughter was hired by an agency in her own cabinet, and she has enlisted the head of another agency (another appointee of hers) in trying to get the media to back off from the story. Which gets us into questions of abuse of power for personal reasons.

    By the way, my daughter went to the hospital. She was dehydrated. They gave her some fluids and released her, and she’s feeling better. So I feel better. But I have no political point to make about that.

  8. Doug Ross

    I guess I don’t know what to make of a blog post complaining about the wording and “emotion” of a couple Facebook entries… and the first one you use as an example (“For instance, there’s this:” ) is simply a repost of a statement made by Keel that doesn’t have a hint of emotion in it.

    What was so emotional about that?

    Maybe you need to cut back on looking for warts on Nikki.

  9. Brad

    I don’t have to look, Doug. I’m looking for something else — in this case, following the veto votes — and they just pop up.

    And remember, the thing that got me focusing on the emotion was the comment by Walter that maybe Nikki didn’t write these things. The emotion makes it seem more like her, although it doesn’t prove anything.

    And yes, the first post was more from the gut, in terms of the way it’s written. But you have to look at the subject matter of the second. The governor of the state apparently got her SLED chief to make this statement. Not the sort of thing a dispassionate, calm public official gets another public servant to do.

  10. Brad

    Or maybe she didn’t. But if Keel injected himself into this of his own accord, I’d be very interested to hear his thinking on why he did so, or even how he came to hear of it. An inquiry about an agency that reports to the governor hiring the governor’s child hardly seems like something that would normally come to the attention of SLED.

  11. Patricia Finley

    Nikki Haley can dish it out – but she cannot take it. She insist on using her facebook page for govermental business but she also mixes that with family news. She herself has posted things about her family on her facebook page which if she mixes family news with governmental news is fare game as a public newsworthy article.
    It seems as if Nikki Haley wants her way when it is convenient and when she is not breaking the law by nepotism in the state government.

  12. Brad

    I need to thank Doug, because answering him made me spend more time thinking about this than I would have… and the more I do, the more questions it raises about the propriety of the governor’s actions…

    I look forward to seeing a story in The State about this. I hope it’s complete. One thing I hope the paper does is question Keel about how he came to hear about this, and what prompted him to issue such a statement.

  13. Steven Davis II

    @Doug – “How much of your waking day do you spend obsessing on every word that comes out of Nikki Haley’s mouth/keyboard?”

    90% that he did with Mark Sanford.

  14. Steven Davis II

    “It’s weird that he thinks it’s weird that there are frequent references to that person here.”

    He’s not alone, I’ve been thinking this since you worked for The State. You have the ability to nitpick every damned thing someone you disagree with does.

  15. Steven Davis II

    Brad – Isn’t your youngest daughter an adult who can take care of herself? The way you wrote in your first paragraph I was wondering if she was 12 years old on a glorified field trip.

  16. Kathryn Fenner

    Those who do not care for Brad’s mix are free to look elsewhere, but I get tired of hearing about it. I don’t find every post riveting– Brad’s taste in popular culture is not mine, but, hey, he does a lot for our enjoyment and puts up with a lot of abuse.
    Send me email if you need assistance w/your daughter. I’m in Central Europe for a while longer….

  17. Kathryn Fenner

    I guess our governor is a job creator, though, albeit at the expense of the hours of existing workers.

  18. Kathryn Fenner

    And I’ve been feeling very poorly for several days and I am most definitely an adult accompanied by another adult, yet it is disconcerting to be ill and away from home even to seasoned old folks like me….

  19. Silence

    I have no problem with her daughter working a summer job at the State House gift shop. It’s a lot easier for the security detail to keep an eye on her there than say – bagging groceries at Piggly Wiggly. In this case it makes sense, and I applaud the First Family for allowing/encouraging her to get a summer job.

    I do think it was inappropriate to publish the details of said job. Imagine if Chelsea, Jenna and Barbara, or Sasha and Malia had summer jobs, it would be near impossible to keep them safe in a public setting.

    Ms. Silence would be livid if someone published the details of our child’s summer plans on a blog/news website. Plenty of creeps out there, so a little paranoia is reasonable. If she finds out about a picture of Baby S. on FaceBook she makes me go in and untag it, or ask my friends to remove it. I think that’s a little over the top, but, not totally unreasonable.

  20. Doug Ross

    It’s still not clear to me – Haley didn’t write the Keel post, just reposted it. You used it as as an example of “They are so emotional.”

    And yet reading the Keel post, it seems like pretty dull boilerplate. What was so emotional about the Keel message?

  21. bud

    While it is true that Brad does get a bit carried away with this obsession with the governor she does do an awful lot to warrant such attention. She really is a terrible governor and the state of the state with it’s well-above-the-national-average unemployment rate serves as proof that her tenure has been a failure.

  22. j

    Doug,
    SD II,
    You guys are really defensive about Nikki. Wonder if she’ll ever release her publicly funded emails or maybe she’ll just destroy them like her preference for the Presidency did when he left the governorship in MA.

  23. Kathryn Fenner

    @Silence– a summer job at the expense of the hours of people who really need the job? When far older teens cannot find work, not to mention adults?

  24. Steven Davis II

    @j – I’m not defensive about Haley, I can’t stand the woman. But I also can’t stand someone who does what Brad does and just nitpicks constantly and never drops it, he’s like a bad rash. It was worse when Sanford was in office, I swear Brad tailed him everywhere from his office to the bathroom and we heard every complaint Brad could find to complain about.

    @Silence – Chelsea has had more than her share of jobs handed to her. She tried her hand at being a Wall Street hedge fund broker, now she thinks she might want to be a reporter so somehow without any experience she landed a job with NBC… and from the clips I’ve seen hopefully will be trying something in the welding or machine shop maintenance field next.

    @Kathryn – Ahh, the life of the middle-class American, summering in Europe. Please tend to Master Warthen’s youngest if you will.

  25. Brad

    Thanks, Kathryn. She was in Germany (Bonn, Berlin) several days back. Then she was at the beach in Croatia. In Italy now…

  26. Brad

    Since you bring it up, Silence, I would imagine that the Haleys’ anxiety about people knowing where their daughter works would be greatly allayed by what you expressed just before that — that she’s not only working within about 30 yards of the governor’s receptionist and personal security, but behind a security outpost, complete with metal detector, that screens people coming into the building.

    Not that parents can’t worry anyway. I can certainly testify to that. But as a threat, this sort of data seems no more problematic than people knowing the Haleys live in the governor’s mansion.

  27. Silence

    I think if you are Governor, giving your teenage daughter a part-time summer job working for a typical wage in a state-owned gift shop is a reasonable amount of nepotism. It’s honestly not like she could just go work at McDonald’s or something, the additional security detail alone would cost a fortune.

    Now, if you give your adult son or sister in law a high paying job – say at the State Ports Authority or something, I have a problem with that.

  28. Doug Ross

    @J

    Like Steven said, I don’t like Nikki Haley. Didn’t vote for her, wouldn’t vote for her, don’t think she can withstand a primary challenge if she runs again.

    I just know she isn’t the problem and I certainly think that wasting any time analyzing her would be time better spent analyzing the actions of the Legislature… as the recent budget veto circus proved, she has no power and this state is in the hands of a very small group of career politicians. But Brad would rater focus on her “emotions” instead of dry, mundane stuff like the Legislature’s excessive pensions or digging into the value of a hospitality tax or any other wasteful government activity.

  29. Kathryn Fenner

    We are staying in a very ascetic apartment in a monastery as guests of the German government through several professors’ grants. We take the bus or train. It’s a liberal’s paradise, complete with a brief mini strike on the bus line we use!

  30. Burl Burlingame

    Parents worry about their kids, no matter what age they are. But I’m thinking that the Haleys ought to be a little more concerned about thrusting their teenager into a world ruled by privilege and patronage and easy work paid for by taxpayers. What kind of conservative values lesson is that?

    And oh, if Haley writes her own FB comments, then she’s also part if the “media.”

  31. Kathryn Fenner

    She’s fourteen, which is the bare minimum to work anywhere. Taking the hours away from someone who probably needs the work so your daughter can have some Disneyland-type faux work experience?

    Why not have her work at Exotica?

  32. j

    Doug, maybe you should run for an elected position to better the “goberment” or expand the Sunday School attitude and behavior toward helping others as you’ve noted before.

  33. Brad

    I’m going to explain this one more time. Doug probably won’t understand because, though we are both pretty smart guys, his mind just works very differently from mine.

    But here goes.

    My thorough, longtime familiarity with political systems in this state and others (which has more than anything shown me how wildly different this state is from others) has taught me that we have a system in SC that is amazingly resistant to change. There is one fulcrum where a lever MIGHT, given the right conditions, actually move South Carolina forward: The governor’s office. There is almost NOTHING that can be done through the Legislature. Spend a lot of time trying to replace a lawmaker, and all you’ve done is replace 1/170th of a body that is constitutionally constructed to resist any sort of change that any one member may try to exert upon it. Each lawmaker IS important, which is why I’ve spent ENORMOUS amounts of time on legislative endorsements over the years — far, far, far more in total than spent on gubernatorial (because of the sheer number of them), but in the end, nothing like a governor.

    That is why I have stressed two things for more than two decades: First, press as hard as I can to get the executive branch up to the coequal status it is SUPPOSED to have, and does not have, with the legislative branch. There are two main ways of doing that — giving the governor control over wider swaths of the executive branch (because it’s ridiculous for ANY executive function not to report to the elected chief executive) and eliminating these separately-elected executives who further fragment executive authority.

    Why push for those things? Because once you do, one person can to a great extent balance out the Legislature, at least in terms of day-to-day governmental operations. So electing the right person can have a great effect on this state that has been held back for so long by the Legislature.

    The second thing I have placed great stress on is the enormous, crucial importance of electing a GOOD governor, someone who would actually try to move the state forward, and have the skills to do so. This is important, even before we manage to give the governor the tools a governor should have, for two reasons: The first is that you simply can’t sell an empowered executive to the public when your current governor is someone to whom no reasonable person would want to give greater power.

    The second reason is that even without greater constitutional power, the right governor can accomplish a great deal. Examples of that include Fritz Hollings, Dick Riley and Carroll Campbell, who managed through sheer political skill to push positive agendas that were good for this state. (This fact is used by defenders of the status quo, who say “See, the governor doesn’t need any more power.” I say they could have accomplished more with greater authority. I also firmly believe that much better candidates would emerge if the job had more authority.)

    So it is that during elections, I will do everything I can to urge the people of South Carolina to elect the best, or at least the least bad, gubernatorial candidate. And then, when the voters go ahead and pick the wrong candidate yet again, I’m not going to let anybody forget it. I’m going to keep on reminding everyone within earshot how critically important it is to do a much better job next time.

    Doug would have me react to legislative dominance, and legislative inertia, by spending all my time cursing the darkness. The legislative branch provides the one opportunity to ignite a light that can make a differences, and I’ll never give up trying to get us the right governor, and give that governor the power to govern well.

  34. Michael Rodgers

    Doug,

    Mark Sanford took Brad’s platform for reforming the state and declared that he was going to implement it. In other words, he recruited Brad Warthen to be his conscience as he set out to implement the much-needed reforms.

    Brad got extremely excited about this development and served well in that position. Perhaps too well, and perhaps he’s still stuck on that disappointment, when it turned out that Mark Sanford wasn’t actually interested in doing … Anything. At. All.

    Now Nikki Haley the new Mark Sanford is the same as the old boss and maybe Brad is stuck too much on the won’t get fooled again rut. Maybe. A good governor could take the much-needed reforms and run with them. Sheheen could have done it.

    You’re right that he and everyone should pay a lot more attention to individual legislators. But a governor is someone to focus on. Who in the legislature is there to focus on?

    Relatedly, this blog post at Donehue Direct quotes Wesley Donehue saying that by attacking Gov. Haley, “[The Democrats] aren’t smart enough to know they are putting a political gun to their own temples and pulling the trigger.”

    Is Gov. Haley the embodiment of the SC TEA Party and ths attacking her is also an attack on the TEA Party and other Republicans, where the attack will encourage right-leaning independents to prefer Democrats overall instead of Republicans? Extremely unlikely. Brad said that Nikki Haley was unlike most Republicans he knows.

    I’ll leave it there for now.

  35. Corey H

    Maybe it will end up in The Buzz section on Sunday where the reporters can say what’s going on without that nuisance of a byline.

  36. Steven Davis II

    “The second thing I have placed great stress on is the enormous, crucial importance of electing a GOOD governor, someone who would actually try to move the state forward, and have the skills to do so”

    In other words, vote for the guy Brad wants because he knows what’s best for us better than we do. That’s a big ego you’re carrying around.

  37. bud

    You had me until you defended the excrutiatingly awful Carroll Campbell. Just like your admonishment of Doug you will never, ever understand why I feel that way. So be it. But citing Carroll Campbell as an effective governor just doesn’t buttress your argument. At least not in my mind.

  38. Rose

    From the Rock Hill Herald’s coverage:

    “In the past, Haley has not expressed concerns about her family’s security, including her family’s location and pictures in postings on her public Facebook page.

    Since taking office in January 2011, Haley also has posted about her daughter heading to dance recitals, shadowing her mother at work, serving as a vacation Bible school counselor, running in a race and working her first babysitting job. Haley also mentioned the name of her daughter’s orthodontist in a posting.

    However, after The State contacted the governor’s office for comment Monday, SLED chief Mark Keel, appointed by Haley , called the newspaper to express concerns, in general, about security.

    Haley ‘s office issued a statement Tuesday from Keel: “In my 30 years-plus of experience at SLED, the security or activities of minor children of elected officials is something that the media in general has taken a ‘hands off’ approach to in reporting except as officially released by the elected official’s office.” ”

    Haley set herself up by putting all of that personal information on her daughter and other family members on Facebook.

  39. Tim

    The thing about this threads headline is that Facebook terms of use require Nikki Haley and only Nikki Haley have access to her personal account.

  40. Mark Stewart

    I guess we can infer that Haley does not have the political heft to be able to secure a more interesting private sector position for her daughter away from the limelight from an amenable supporter?

    That to me is more shocking than the rest of the story.

  41. Doug Ross

    Sorry, but each legislator does not have 1/170 of the power. A half dozen people have all the power via their seniority. The rest are just lackeys doing what the big guys want.

    And you can keep calling for a change in the structure but there is zero incentive for the legislature to give up the power. So you can keep up your decades long noble quest while Bobby Harrell and Hugh Leatherman just keep right on doing what they’ve been doing.

    Maybe if you focused your attention on those two instead of Nikki Haley we’d see them have to bend under the scrutiny… but I guess that’s Will Folks’ job.

  42. j

    As it has been said there are two types of individuals who run for elected office, those who want to be and those who want to make a positive difference for their constituents. One can examine the past leadership results or lack thereof of those that run for higher office. People don’t usually change their behavior patterns except with maybe therapy.

    Brad, as a father and grandfather, I can empathize with your worry
    and am grateful for your blog and the ideas that you examine and your considered observations.

  43. Steven Davis II

    “That is why I have stressed two things for more than two decades”

    Most people would have given up after the first 6-7 years of being ignored.

  44. Kathy

    If Governor Haley doesn’t want her daughter’s whereabouts commented upon in the media, then she shouldn’t impose on a state government entity to give her daughter a job.

    Haley has turned victim-hood into more than Rev. Sharpton or Rev. Jackson could ever have hoped for. I bet she already knows several ways to turn it into big bucks.

  45. Silence

    @ Mark – I’m a bit suprised at that myself. You’d figure that some political supporter or wannabe power player could offer her a summer job, with no contact with the public.

    I remember when i was 15 (too young to lifeguard-my preferred job) my dad got me a job working for a friend of his, working in a feed store & warehouse. I broke bulk 50 lb bags of feed down into 5&10 lb bags for pet owners. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I hated the job, and also that I was allergic to a lot of stuff.

    @ Kathryn – I don’t think they own Exotica anymore. Maybe I’m wrong about that though.

  46. Silence

    Of course, as the next thread discusses, jobs for people without college degrees (such as non-Doogie Howser 14 year olds) are hard to come by. During tough times, it comes down to who you know. Playing the Guv card doesn’t hurt…

  47. j

    It may have been an affirmative executive action to increase employment for those under age 15 with no HS diploma or it could be hiring a young person who has influence with decision makers in high places. Um.. a generational pattern?

  48. Steve Gordy

    As to the security issue, right after I moved to Aiken (1988), I was eating in Ryan’s one night and someone pointed out Strom Thurmond’s oldest daughter. She worked there between college terms, IIRC. No additional security was thought to be necessary.

  49. Brad

    Steve, since you mention that…

    I don’t begrudge the governor a security detail. At least, I’d hate to be the one to say, “Call it off,” and then have something horrible happen.

    But I’ve always sort of doubted the value of it, in terms of cost compared to risk.

    I don’t suppose this sort of question is answerable, but I find myself wondering — to what extent is being governor, or a member of a governor’s family, more dangerous than, say, being someone who goes to a midnight showing of the new Batman movie?

    There’s probably just as much risk of a member of Congress being assaulted — I point to Gabby Gifford — as a governor. But we don’t provide them with the kind of security we do governors. I don’t know why, but I suspect it has something to do with there being so many of them. In other words, we set the cost alongside the risk. (If anybody knows more about that, please join in.)

    Sometimes it gets ridiculous, as when Lt. Gov. Nick Theodore traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta with an elaborate detail, and a command post set up in the hotel. It was ridiculous. The actual governor, Carroll Campbell, came to town (for a silly partisan “Truth Squad” press conference harassing the Dems) with nothing like that sort of security, and the point was raised.

    We got rid of security for the Gov Lite, until Andre wanted it, and the senators wanted to give Andre what he wanted.

  50. Brad

    Possibly the best reason for a security detail for the governor is to keep an eye on the governor, as we learned from Mark Sanford slipping away from his detail to go to Argentina.

    That said, I hate to entirely dismiss the need for security reasons, because you never know when something bad will happen — to a governor, or to someone going to see Batman.

  51. Silence

    Other than the tragic incident involving Gabrielle Giffords, and the congressman who was shot trying to rescue people from Jonestown, I can’t think of any other congressmen who have been shot, although I’m sure there are some others.

  52. Silence

    Ahh, thought of another incident. Buffalo Bill (Jame Gumb) kidnapped the Senator’s daughter in Silence of The Lambs. Another good reason to protect the offspring of politicians.

  53. Kathryn Fenner

    I thought I read that no governor has been attacked other than Presidential candidates. Was that from Mark Sanford?

  54. Joanne

    Haley is a hypocrite. And I’m surprised at The State not printing the information. It’s not about security at all. If that were the case, Haley should keep it off FB.

    Brad, I would be worried about my daughter as well and thought a few years ago I’d be on a plane for Nottingham when mine had a serious throat abscess. Fortunately, the antibiotic kicked in before I had to scrape up enough money for a ticket. I hope she gets better soon.

  55. Brad

    Good job, Corey, for at least trying to get the story out there.

    To my understanding of what happened — and what I know is incomplete, and off the record — you got a couple of important details wrong. Your account of how Rock Hill ran the story is slightly off, and from what I’ve been able to piece together, the story hasn’t been “killed” at all, but is still regarded as incomplete, for reasons that are difficult to fathom from where I sit.

    But remember, “where I sit” is on the outside (and actually, even if I were still EPE, I’d be on the “outside” as far as news decisions are concerned — although I did know and still know a good proportion of the few people remaining in the newsroom). So my own understanding of what is happening is incomplete.

    Your story reminds me… decades ago, when I was involved in a complete reorganization of the newsroom at The State, I advocated for Cindi Scoppe’s idea that there needed to be a media beat, to tell people what was really going on in media in Columbia. It didn’t happen. But the need for that is if anything probably greater than ever today — when it is far less likely to happen.

    So good for you for trying to fill that role.

  56. Scout

    Commenters on Haley’s facebook page claim that the State did publish an article online but that it has since been removed. One of them posted a link to some kind of screen capture of the supposed article:

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.heraldonline.com%2F2012%2F07%2F19%2F4122917%2Fsc-gov-haley-faces-criticism-as.html#storylink=rss

    This link shows the article appearing in an upstate newspaper but written by Gina Smith at The State.

    I don’t know enough about these sort of links to judge if this is what it says it is. It’s a little confusing that the statement from Rob Godfrey quoted in this article reads as if he is responding to something else already published.

    So I don’t know.

  57. Kathryn Fenner

    She does love to use dramatic phrases like “It’s a sad day…” I guess it’s no longer a great day, eh?

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