The Morgue Podcast

My guest this month is Tony Bartelme, a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. For more than 30 years, Tony has investigated government corruption, environmental issues, and other topics at The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier.

The story he submitted is a 2018 piece that uncovered questionable spending by a public prosecutor in South Carolina. Read it here.

Tony is a senior projects report for The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. He has earned national honors from the Nieman, Scripps, Loeb and National Press foundations. In 2021, Columbia Journalism School awarded him the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, which recognizes a journalist for cumulative achievements.

So while you’re waiting on those six source calls to get back to you (because, of course, they’ll only call you back while you’re on the line with someone else), let’s hear from Tony as he talks about uncovering public corruption, the hardest part of a story, why you should always go, and navigating the attempts to starve the query.

Find Tony and his work at The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier.

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See you next month.

In this inaugural episode I speak with Sammy Fretwell, who has worked the environment beat at The State newspaper of Columbia South Carolina since 1994. Sammy grew up in the Palmetto state and graduated from the journalism school at the University of South Carolina.

Sammy is an award-winning journalist and his accolades include the USC’s Taylor Tomlin award for investigative journalism for a 2008 series written with John Monk on failures at the state Department of Health and Environmental Control. He’s an excellent reporter and I feel lucky to have him as my first guest on this podcast.

Here is his 2005 piece we dissect for the episode.

In the days before recording, Sammy learned that he was one of 90 reporters, editors, and photographers laid off across 13 newspapers owned by McClatchy. At The State, Sammy was one of seven to be laid off for a total of four reporters, two editors, and a photographer.

McClatchy has been make cuts for years but this latest was among their deepest. How many other Sammy Fretwells were caught up in those layoffs? This is why this podcast was needed.

You know what they say about planting trees? The best time to plant was 20 years ago, the second best time is now. And that goes for this podcast. It sure would have been nice to have started it a decade or more ago. But the next best time is right now.

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