The History of The University of South Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communications

By Patricia G. McNeely
Distinguished Professor Emeritus

The first seed for a journalism school at the University of South Carolina was planted when August Kohn, a Carolina graduate with a keen interest in the newspaper business, was elected to the Board of Trustees in 1900. Kohn, a one-time Columbia correspondent for The (Charleston) News and Courier, began urging his colleagues to set up a department of journalism. Kohn developed a life-long interest in journalism while he was editor in 1888 of South Carolina College's first on-campus journalistic publication, The Carolinian. He began contributing college news to N. G. Gonzales, Columbia bureau chief for The News and Courier, and when Gonzales fell ill with typhoid fever in December 1888, Kohn worked regularly in the bureau. After Kohn's graduation in 1889, he became a reporter for the paper. He moved to the Columbia bureau in 1892.

Kohn served as president of the S. C. Press Association before leaving The News and Courier to develop various business interests in Columbia, including banking, insurance, and real estate. He was elected to the University of South Carolina Board of Trustees at a young age, but he never forgot his journalism roots.

Proposals for a journalism school did not catch fire, but by 1904-05, the college catalog offered one course, "English Essay classes by distinguished journalists and others." With Kohn's blessing and the paternal interest of The State newspaper, USC's first student newspaper, The Gamecock, was founded January 30, 1908. The first editor was Robert Elliot Gonzales, whose father and uncles owned The State. The founding of the Gamecock increased interest in journalism on campus, but plans for a separate department stalled.

About 1910, Professor E.L. Green tried to establish a USC printing plant to lower the university's printing costs and to provide part- time work for students. Trustees Kohn and David R. Coker personally underwrote the cost of the equipment with loans, hoping that it would spur more interest in journalism.

By 1913 and 1914, the young editors of The Gamecock were editorially calling for the establishment of a journalism school, but World War I intervened before a serious effort could be mounted. A plaintive wail in the Gamecock in 1917 years later reflected the lack of progress: "Somebody endow a school of journalism."

But in 1922, the university acquired a new president, William Davis Melton, a Carolina graduate and Columbia lawyer. Melton's election stirred editorial opposition from several South Carolina editors, including the Yorkville Enquirer, the Saluda Standard and the Calhoun Times, whose editors saw Melton, Kohn and William Watts Ball, editor of The State, as part of a "Columbia ring" that controlled the state.

With Kohn's support, Melton rekindled the idea of a USC journalism school, which quickly won the enthusiastic support of most of South Carolina's newspapers and the hearty endorsement of the S.C. Press Association. On December 12, 1922, the USC Board of Trustees authorized the creation of a School of Journalism to be established in 1923. When the USC budget was approved by the legislature March 14, 1923, it included $3,000 for the salary of a dean for the new journalism school, but no other budget.

Melton reported to the USC Board of Trustees June 12, 1923, that the establishment of the new School of Journalism was finally possible. The board at first considered hiring Stanhope Sams, one of the editors of The State, as dean of the new school. Sams was asked to study journalism programs in the country and submit a proposed outline, which was printed in the 1923-24 catalog. Sams spoke at least eight languages and had traveled through the Far East on special assignments for the Department of Commerce. After being editor of The Japan Times of Tokyo and correspondent for several American newspapers, he joined The State's editorial department in 1905 and won an honorary doctorate from Newberry College in 1906.

Instead of Sams, however, the USC board of trustees chose W.W. Ball, who took a pay cut from his $6,000 a year job at The State to become dean at $3,000 a year.

Ball, son of Beaufort Watts and Eliza Watts Ball of Laurens, was barely 18 years old when he was graduated from South Carolina College (USC) in 1886. He was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1890, but he opted for a journalism career in stead of law. Ball was editor first of the Laurens Advertiser and then of the Columbia Journal. From his earliest days, he wanted to be a major player in the state's politics, but success was a long time coming. The Columbia foundered, so Ball returned home and bought the Laurens Advertiser, where he joined the chorus of editors opposing the policies of Governor "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman. Ball subsequently edited The (Charleston) Evening Post and The State newspapers in South Carolina before becoming the first dean of the School of Journalism at USC.

The most vehement opposition to creation of the school came from the Saluda Standard, which accused The State of manipulating Ball's appointment and rigging the establishment of the new school. "There is absolutely no need for a 'school of journalism' at the university and it was established solely because it would afford employment and a measure of honor to men dear to its sponsors....The 'school of journalism' accurately defined, is nothing more than a ruse of 'the ring's' to extract more money from the state treasury. . . . The vast majority of the publishers in South Carolina cannot employ 'journalists' to edit their sheets...The majority of 'journalists' that the university turns out will have to go to other states for employment. ...Not over a baker's dozen newspapers in South Carolina can afford a journalist and in several of these the 'boss' is the editor."

Ball resigned from The State June 12, 1923, to plan for the new school, which occupied four rooms on the third floor of a rickety old house on the Horseshoe near the site where McKissick Museum stands today. Two rooms were classrooms, a third was for storage of newspapers, and the other small space was an office. The house was originally constructed as the President's House near McKissick Museum, but it was in such poor condition that Melton had refused to move into the old building.

Eight students registered for journalism classes in the fall of 1923. During the first year the School of Journalism listed 13 journalism courses ranging from Reporting and News Writing to Advertising and Trade Writing. All except one were taught by Ball.

After a few weeks on the job, Ball wrote his friend Philip H. Gadsden in Philadelphia:

"...the students in the last two years will have other work besides mine, but they take my instruction in news writing and kindred subjects. .. if in two years I can lick a raw youth into shape so that in the first year of outside work, he will not be a burden to his city editor, I'll do pretty well."

On July 20, 1923 Ball wrote another friend T.H. Dreher in St. Matthews:

"I shall have students who do not purpose to be newspaper workers but I shall try to teach them how to write a letter that will not set a copy-reader's reserve magazine of profanity on fire."

Just two years after the journalism school was established, Charles Braxton Williams became the first graduate of the USC School of Journalism in the Class of 1925.

For $20 a week, Williams went to work at The (Greenwood) Index-Journal. The front page and wire copy were turned over to him on his second day on the job. "I didn't think about it then, but if Mr. Ball hadn't done a pretty damn good job with us at the University, I couldn't have handled (it)." By the time Williams returned to USC in 1925 to earn a master's degree, the university was offering one graduate-level journalism course, but students who wanted a master's still had to concentrate in English.

Ball declined an invitation to run for governor in 1926, the same year he urged his friend Thomas R. Waring Sr. to buy the financially ailing Charleston News & Courier. Ball was satisfied with the growth of the college, which had 36 students by 1926. Ball was eager for a new challenge. When Arthur Manigault, who owned the Charleston Evening Post, bought The News and Courier in 1927, Ball replaced his cap and gown with a green-eye shade as editor of The News and Courier. He replaced Pulitzer Prize winning editor Robert Lathan, who became editor of the Asheville Citizen.

Williams, USC's first journalism graduate, followed Ball to Charleston, where he became circulation director of both the Evening Post and The News and Courier and a director of the Packet Motor Express and the Post and Courier Foundation.

Ball's successor as dean was J. Rion McKissick. Born in Union in 1884, McKissick was a 1905 graduate of South Carolina College who attended Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1914, but like his predecessor as dean, he turned to a journalism career. McKissick became a reporter on the Union Progress, a semi- weekly. He soon was promoted to business manager of the paper (the forerunner of today's Union Daily Times).

McKissick left the state briefly to work as a reporter, assistant editor and chief editorial writer of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He came back home to take the editor's job at The Greenville News before buying a partial interest in The Greenville Piedmont and becoming its editor in 1919.

McKissick assumed the dean's post in 1927. He initiated a course that became a legend - "Vocabulary Building and Advanced Composition" ¬ taught exclusively by Dr. Havilah Babcock until his death in 1964 and known to generations of Carolina graduates as "I Want A Word." The journalism school acquired typewriters that year, but each student had to pay a $5 fee to use them. McKissick started a campus news bureau. Selected juniors and seniors wrote stories about the university for academic credit, but the stories also were disseminated to the state's daily and weekly newspapers.

McKissick's classes were informal. A student later wrote that the dean sat behind a large desk piled high with papers and talked to his students quietly and with great friendliness through the smoke arising from his favorite White Owl tobacco in its cherry wood pipe. McKissick punctuated his lectures with anecdotes about South Carolina's past. He typed his own exams and pasted the pages together in long streamers.

McKissick and his wife, Caroline, became surrogate parents for a generation of young journalists. They found a residence a block off campus and maintained an "open house" policy for students throughout their lives. Alumnus Frank Wardlaw once recalled looking through a large window of the couple's home and seeing McKissick at his desk "reading or banging on his oversized typewriter with two fingers. We would always stop, and he would welcome us with warm geniality, pulling up comfortable chairs for us.... He treated us as intelligent adults, and was never in any sense patronizing." The students always called McKissick "Colonel."

Student enrollment topped 50 in 1927, and courses were added to accommodate the growth: feature writing, a news writing lab, copy editing, journalism history and law of the press. Eight students received bachelor's degrees. Two years later, the school achieved national recognition when the New York State Education Department accepted its bachelor's degree program.

The Gamecock reported in an April 8, 1930 article that the "percentage of staff members who are candidates for the degree given after a certain amount of pounding Dean McKissick's typewriters is increasing." The number of journalism students had risen to seventy-seven by the 1929-30 academic year,

However, the financial troubles of the Great Depression struck the university in 1932. Salaries were reduced, and all non-essential activities were eliminated or reduced. Free tuition and special scholarships were abolished. In The Gamecock of November 24, 1933, students stridently complained about the journalism building, calling it an old "one hoss shay." During the early Depression years, the journalism school still enjoyed modest growth in enrollment.

During those years, McKissick polished his own academic credentials. He studied for eight summers at the University of Wisconsin to earn a master's degree in journalism. Not content with that, he began working on a Ph.D. in political science from Wisconsin. (The university didn't offer a journalism doctorate then.)

On July 1, 1936, the USC Board of Trustees named McKissick president of the university, but he continued as dean of the School of Journalism.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the face of journalism on campus began to change. The English Department initiated a radio course, and the Physics Department began teaching photography.

Advertising was added to the curriculum in 1936, along with two new faculty: Professor Samuel Capers DePass, a native of Camden with a law degree from South Carolina College. DePass had been a reporter on newspapers in Utah, Minnesota and Chicago; He was joined by Instructor Floyd Dwight Rodgers, who had a journalism degree from South Carolina College and a master of science degree in journalism from Columbia University. Rodgers was paid $1,620. When he left in 1937 to accept a more lucrative offer from WIS radio, Frank H. Wardlaw replaced him on the faculty. In 1938, the School of Journalism was moved to the second floor of Legare.

McKissick kept the dual offices of president and dean of the journalism school until 1939, when DePass was appointed dean at no increase in salary. His salary was $3,134. Wardlaw was making $1,900 a year. The original journalism building was razed in 1938 to make way for the new McKissick Library (now McKissick Museum).

McKissick died in office in 1944 and became the only person buried on the campus. His tombstone, in front of the South Caroliniana Library on the University Horseshoe, bears the words, "I have kept the faith."

The school moved around campus often. After Legare College, it was relegated to Maxcy's basement. Students called those cramped, poorly lit quarters "the Mole Hole." With the postwar boom of GI Bill students, the school moved again, into a building that lumped together the registrar and schools of journalism, retailing and English Bible. "Journalism might be called the orphan school of the university," the Gamecock editorialized.

The "orphan" continued to migrate around campus. In 1946, the school moved to the Davis-McCutcheon House (now the Faculty House), and in 1948 to a war surplus building between Davis and Currell. After several years of failing health, DePass retired in 1950.

After two prospective deans signed contracts and then immediately resigned, USC Director of Public Relations and former reporter Robert Joshua Cranford became acting dean just before the start of the 1950-51 school year. Cranford, a Duke University graduate, was a veteran of the Associated Press.

When students returned for classes, they found he had revamped the curriculum and moved the college into expanded quarters that occupied the entire center of Legare College, which was equipped with new typographical equipment and a darkroom. Cranford saw as his mission to provide a "good, solid nuts and bolts curriculum for people who were going into the business." He built on the basic courses that had been offered since McKissick's early days, but added nine new ones, including "Public Opinion and Propaganda," "High School Journalism," "Newspaper Business Management" and "Public Relations."

Cranford never became dean. The job went to Ross Pelton Schlabach, a 34-year-old assistant professor at Pennsylvania State College who had worked for the Newport News Daily Press and Times- Herald and the Richmond News-Leader. Schlabach, a 1939 graduate of Washington and Lee graduate, received a master of science degree in journalism from Columbia University. His first actions were to install an AP teletype and to renovate room 203 of Legare College as a student lounge. During his tenure, students began publishing a "practice newspaper," a four-page tabloid, on an old press the college bought for $500. The paper was first named "Old Proof Press" and later "The Legare Ledger." Sixty-eight students were enrolled in the fall of 1951 when the school bought the proof press, which produced a press run of 30-to 40-copies of a four-page tabloid newspaper.

After Cranford and photography instructor Malcolm Donald Coe left, they were replaced by H. Harrison Jenkins and John H. McGrail. Jenkins, who had bachelor's and master's degrees from USC, had worked for the Associated Press and the Charlotte News. He also had taught at the University of Florida and North Carolina State University before teaching at USC. He was associate editor of The Columbia Record. McGrail became the photography instructor.

Schlabach began the first internship program in 1952 when he sent students to the Charleston Evening Post. To promote good relations with the state's editors, Schlabach traveled around the state at his own expense to meet them. Schlabach sought accreditation by the Accrediting Council on Education for Journalism and achieved it in 1954, though the inspection committee was very critical of the tattered state of Legare College.

By 1955, students were also interning at The (Charleston) News and Courier and The (Rock Hill) Herald.

When Schlabach resigned in 1955, he was replaced by George A. Buchanan, known to all his students as "Dean Buch." Buchanan, editor and publisher of The Columbia Record, was a legend among state reporters.

Buchanan, who was born in 1898, worked part-time at The State while attending classes at USC. When Dean W. W. Ball left the university in 1927 to become editor of The (Charleston) News and Courier, he hired Buchanan as city editor. Buchanan returned to Columbia in 1931 as editor of The Columbia Record. Buchanan, who was editor and publisher of The Columbia Record in 1956 when he became dean of the School of Journalism, continued the dual roles for almost two years.

The years between 1955 and 1965 were a period of major growth, primarily in curriculum and staff. The size and qualifications of the faculty increased, the basic curriculum was revised and expanded, a graduate program was initiated, and advertising and broadcasting sequences were created. Buchanan introduced courses such as "International Mass Communications," "Advertising in Mass Communications" and "Radio and Television Newswriting." In addition to basic newswriting and advertising, courses were offered in public relations, typography, copyreading and copydesk procedures, advanced copyreading, photography, public opinion and propaganda, newspaper business management, high school journalism and the literature of journalism. A complete program of graduate courses was offered for the first time in 1959, and the faculty featured another first: three professors with Ph.D.'s.

In addition to Assistant Professor Jenkins, who was editorial page editor of The Record, Buchanan hired Lloyd L. Huntington, who was managing editor of The State. By 1957, more than 200 students were enrolled in the School of Journalism. Buchanan hired Dr. William E. Winter as assistant professor; Dr. Nicholas P. Mitchell, former editor of The Greenville News, as a part-time associate professor; and Maurice R. Cullen, who held a master's degree from Boston University. In addition to being dean, Buchanan became secretary-manager of the S.C. Press Association in 1959 after long-time Secretary-Manager Harold Booker Sr. died. The headquarters of the press association were moved to the School of Journalism in 1961, and in 1962 Associate Professor Earl A. McIntyre joined the faculty and replaced Buchanan as secretary-manager of the press association.

Buchanan, with his ever-present cigarette and rasping laugh, worked tirelessly as a fund-raiser. Scholarships and awards for students tripled between 1955 and 1965. Buchanan revived and restructured the graduate program in 1962, and the School of Journalism divided its undergraduate courses into two sequences: news-editorial and advertising. Radio and Television Newswriting, the first course directly related to the electronic media, was offered in the School of Journalism in 1962.

Magazine editor Ashley Halsey Jr. and Record news editor Robert F. Morrell joined the faculty, and the associate dean of Tulane University, George E. Simmons, was a visiting professor for two years. The school had 225 students and an annual budget of $65,000 by 1964. After ten years as dean and 50 years in journalism, Buchanan retired at the end of the 1964- 65 school year, although he continued to teach classes for two more years. The year Buchanan retired, 232 students were enrolled in journalism classes.

Buchanan was succeeded by Dr. Albert T. Scroggins Jr., chairman of the journalism program at the University of South Florida. A Navy veteran of World War II, Scroggins earned bachelors degrees at Auburn and Missouri, a master's degree in English from Missouri in 1949 and his Ph.D. from Missouri in 1961. He taught at Missouri, Mississippi College, Howard College and Southern Illinois University and was chairman of the journalism program at the University of South Florida when he became professor and dean of the School of Journalism at USC.

Scroggins immediately began building on the foundation established by his predecessors. Shortly after his arrival, he laid out a ten-year growth plan that included moving the college into the proposed Memorial Hall Coliseum to be built in 1969.

Dr. Reid H. Montgomery, who had worked at The State and the Sumter Daily Item, and who had taught journalism at Winthrop College and Florida State University, joined the faculty in 1965. A graduate of Wofford, Carolina and New York University, he succeeded McIntyre as secretary- manager of the South Carolina Press Association and served in that position until 1988. The fourth secretary-manager of the Press Association, he also taught media law and became the voice of freedom of information in South Carolina.

George T. Crutchfield became secretary of the South Carolina Scholastic Press Association. The school began offering an advertising/public relations major in 1962 and a broadcast sequence in 1966 at the urging of the South Carolina Broadcasters Association. The broadcasters agreed to hire the new broadcasting professor as the executive director. Richard M. Uray joined the staff in 1966 from Southern Illinois University and began to develop the electronic journalism program. He was chairman of the broadcasting sequence and professor at USC. He retired in 1996 after 30 years in both jobs.

Dr. Lee Dudek joined the broadcasting faculty in 1967, and Dr. Perry J. Ashley joined the faculty in 1968 as secretary of the S. C. Scholastic Press Association. Dr. Ashley was best known for his History of Journalism course. Ashley earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Kentucky and his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois and had taught at both institutions. Leila (Lee) Skidmore (later Wenthe), who had an M.A. from USC and was a former copy writer for an advertising agency, was the first female instructor in the college. William F. Watson, city editor of the Columbia Record, taught laboratory courses in reporting and editing. J. James McElveen, former instructor at Columbia College, joined the staff in 1968. In 1969, the Scholastic Press Association changed its constitution to form two main divisions: yearbook and newspaper. McElveen directed the newspaper section, and Ashley directed the yearbook division.

Dr. Henry Price joined the faculty in 1969 as the first chairman of the news-editorial sequence. He, became associate dean in 1977 and was best known for his tough copyediting courses.

A second graduate degree, Master of Mass Communications, was added alongside the previous Master of Arts in Journalism. After years of crowding an ever-expanding number of students into Nineteenth Century space, in January 1969 the college moved into 40,000 square feet of the newly designated Carolina Coliseum. The School of Journalism finally had a facility it could be proud of, "one of the finest...in the whole Southeast," in Scroggins' words.

Among the new classrooms was a laboratory for producing a weekly newspaper, The Carolina Reporter, which was designed to provide a real-life working experience for seniors bound for print journalism careers. The newspaper was established in 1971 by Price. Besides enhancing reporting skills, the newspapers gives students an opportunity to edit, lay out and design pages, write headlines, and produce graphics using QuarkXPress and Photoshop computer programs.

The School of Journalism became the College of Journalism in 1971. Patricia G. "Pat" McNeely, who had been a reporter for The Greenville News, The State and The Columbia Record, joined the faculty in 1972. She was chairman of the news-editorial sequence from 1977 to 1994, when she was associate dean for three years.

During Scroggins' tenure, he added four nationally known professors to the faculty.

Joseph A. Nolan, who had been in corporate public relations with the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, taught public relations. He was so popular among the public relations students that the student PR chapter was named in his honor.

William A. "Bill" Emerson, who was the last editor of the old Saturday Evening Post, brought his booming personality to the college, where he established a magazine track. He served on the board of directors of Playboy magazine and was sought after for his gifted and entertaining speeches. He moved to Atlanta after he retired.

Emerson was succeeded by Don McKinney, who had been managing editor of McCall's magazine for 17 years.

Mark Ethridge Jr., a member of a three-generation Pulitzer Prize family, left the newspaper business in Akron, Ohio to teach reporting, media law and advanced copyediting at USC. He owned The Lexington Dispatch for several years before he died.

By 1984, the college had 1,100 students, 28 full-time faculty, more than a dozen adjunct instructors and a budget of $1.4 million. When Scroggins retired the following year, he had been dean to 90 percent of the college's more than 3,000 journalism and mass communications graduates. His tenure of more than twenty years was longer than any other journalism dean in the country at that time. The journalism school had reached its all-time high enrollment of 1,100 students.

Dean Al Scroggins and Pat Crosby, who had been the dean's administrative assistant for 20 years, both retired in 1985. Dr. Perry J. Ashley was acting dean until 1986 when Joe Shoquist, retired managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal, became dean. To reflect a broadening field of study, the school's name became College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Shoquist was succeeded in 1991 by Dr. Judy VanSlyke Turk, who had worked in print journalism - AP in Chicago and the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate in Louisiana - before entering corporate public relations in Chicago and New York. During Turk's tenure, a broadcast "senior semester" was started in 1993, allowing electronic broadcast majors to produce and direct their own TV newscasts.

A Ph.D. program begun in 1994 expanded to 15 students within three years. The Carolina Reporter began an on-line edition, displaying news copy, photos and informational graphics on the Internet.

By 1996, enrollment hovered around 1,000, including 125 master's degree candidates. In 1998, August "Augie" Grant joined the faculty to establish the Center for Mass Communications Research. The inaugural conference was devoted to the cutting-edge theory of framing communications issues. In 1998, Turk was succeeded by Dr. Ronald T. Farrar, who served as acting dean until he retired in 2001. 

Under Farrar, the College struck an innovative partnership with Ifra, the world's largest association of newspaper publishers. Ifra built “Newsplex,” a $2.5-million newsroom of the future, on the campus of South Carolina ETV and donated it to the University. Ifra, based in Darmstadt, Germany, uses the facility to research new technologies and to train journalists from all over the world. The College uses it for classes and academic research. Newsplex reflected the vision of Kerry Northrup, a 1976 news-editorial graduate, who was Ifra’s director of advanced news operations.

Farrar was succeeded as Interim Dean by Dr. Henry T. Price, who had taught copyediting for 32 years. Enrollment reached more than 1,400 students when Price retired in 2002. He was succeeded by Charles Bierbauer, an award-winning CNN correspondent, who presided over the merger in 2002 of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications and the College of Library and Information Science. The College changed its name in 2002 to the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and a new director, Dr. Shirley Staples Carter, joined the faculty in 2003. Carter earned her doctorate at the University of Missouri and had been an administrator at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Louisiana State University, and Wichita State University.

In 2004 the School added a major in visual communications, with Prof. Van Kornegay serving as sequence head. Jessica Boulware was named the first student Outstanding Visual Communications Senior when she graduated in Spring 2004.

In 2005, the School of Journalism and Mass Communications is still teaching the same bedrock professional skills that William Watts Ball instilled in his eight students in 1923. Journalism alumni are scattered around the world as reporters, editors and publishers, radio and television anchors, producers and station managers, advertising and public relations account executives, copy writers, agency presidents and CEOs in thousands of communications organizations. But, just as the School adapted to changes through the years in radio, television, public relations, advertising and new forms of mass communications, it is taking on new frontiers, exploring the opportunities and problems that the technological explosion is creating around the world. Building on more than 75 solid years of history, the School is well prepared for the Twenty First Century, the Century of Communications.

(Editor's Note: Much of the information in this chapter was written by Lloyd W. Brown Jr., in his 1969 thesis on the History of Journalism: University of South Carolina, 1923-1969. It was used with his permission.)

This history was originally published in "Fighting Words: Media History of South Carolina" and "The Palmetto Press: The History of South Carolina's Newspapers and the Press Association," both by Prof. Pat McNeely

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