South Carolina

Michelle Liu

Michelle was a reporting intern for the Toledo Blade, and a general assignment intern for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. As a reporter for the Yale Daily News and a contributing reporter for the New Haven Independent, she shadowed canvassers in New Hampshire and covered labor unions in Connecticut. She was also a program coordinator for Yale’s Summer Journalism Program for high school students. Since joining Report for America, Liu has covered criminal justice for Mississippi Today. The Institute for Non-Profit News named Michelle’s reporting on the spike of prison deaths in Mississippi as one of the “Best in Nonprofit News” in 2018. Her continued reporting on this and other stories not only helped lead the MDOC to invite the FBI to get involved in the investigation of these deaths, but her dogged records requests were cited by the Department of Corrections while asking the Legislature to exempt agencies from parts of the Public Records Act. More recently, the Mississippi Humanities Council invited Michelle to moderate a panel titled, “Locked Up: Criminal Justice in Mississippi.”

Tobie Perkins

Tobie Nell Perkins reports for The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C. where she focuses on struggling Chester County, which is still reeling from decades of textile mill closures. Before coming to South Carolina, Perkins spent the last year writing feature and long-form stories for Fresh Take Florida, a news service based at the University of Florida where she graduated with a degree in journalism. Her stories, distributed through Fresh Take Florida, have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, the Kentucky Herald-Leader and more. She has written for WUFT.org, the University of Florida’s NPR and PBS affiliate, since 2018. Tobie grew up near  Philadelphia, PA. She was the 2020 recipient of the John Paul Jones Jr. Award for Magazine Writing. Perkins was one of two nominees from the University of Florida to be chosen to compete for the National Hearst Award both in Feature Writing and Sports Writing. And she was a varsity member of the university’s Equestrian Team.

Rebecca Liebson

Rebecca Liebson reports for The State in Columbia, S.C. and focuses on public and substandard housing in the state capital. Rebecca Liebson was part of the New York Times’ inaugural fellowship class. She worked for The Weekly, The Times’ first-ever television news series, helping to produce episodes about a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes, the culture of sexual harassment in the world of yoga and more. Liebson has also written for the metro desk where she led The Times’ breaking news coverage of an anti-Semitic attack on a Rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York. Before she arrived at The Times, Liebson held internships at NBC, The New York Post and WSHU Public Radio. She graduated from Stony Brook University in 2019. Her work for The Statesman student newspaper earned her a Hearst Award for Enterprise Writing as well as the title of Best College News Reporter from the Press Club of Long Island for two consecutive years.

The Associated Press

The Associated Press is a global news agency that began 172 years ago as a cooperative of five New York City newspapers. With 263 locations in more than 100 countries, AP provides journalism to roughly 15,000 media outlets around the world. AP sets standards for ethics and excellence, and has won 52 Pulitzer Prizes, including the 2016 gold medal for Public Service for an investigation into labor abuses in the seafood industry, reports that freed more than 2,000 slaves. AP’s seven news bureaus in the northeast U.S. provide vital local and regional news to 378 newsrooms.

The State

On Feb. 18, 1891, the first issue of a new newspaper with a bold name rolled off the presses in South Carolina’s capital city. A new era of S.C. journalism was born that day as the first 3,000 copies of The State newspaper rolled off the two-revolution press. For much of the time since, The State has been the daily newspaper of South Carolina with bureaus across the state offering an unmatched level of statewide and local coverage for South Carolina’s communities.  

The Herald

The Herald dates back to 1872 in Rock Hill, S.C., when it was known as The Lantern. It became The Herald in 1874 and then evolved into The Evening Herald, a name it held until 1986. The Herald was purchased by McClatchy in 1990. We are the leading provider of daily local news coverage in a three-county region. The Herald also produces the Fort Mill Times, a once-a-week publication dedicated to our region’s fastest-growing audience.  

The Myrtle Beach Sun News

Compared to most daily newspapers, The Sun News is relatively young, founded in 1961. But we’re deeply rooted in Myrtle Beach and the Horry County area. We are the only daily newspaper on the Grand Strand.

The Island Packet

In 1970, real estate developer Tom Wamsley and former newspaperman Ralph Hilton enlisted help and money from a third Hilton Head Island resident to start a newspaper to cover happenings on Hilton Head, a small island off the S.C. coast. The first edition — a 20-page tabloid — rolled off the press July 9, 1970. The paper came out on Thursday afternoons to an island with only 3,000 residents. As the island grew into a renowned resort, the Packet grew with it — from a weekly tabloid into a daily broadsheet newspaper. McClatchy Newspapers purchased the Packet in 1990, and by 1995 it had become a seven-day-a-week newspaper.  

Kate Hidalgo Bellows

Kate Hidalgo Bellows reports for The Island Packet, a publication on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where she focuses on the workers behind the affluent vacation destination. It’s different than some other things she’s done. She wrote about guns, rats and one nomadic bear cub as an intern for PennLive in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and reported on the fight over bike lanes as a participant in The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. A 2020 graduate of the University of Virginia, she has reported on Charlottesville, Virginia, and the university for four years, first as an enterprise reporter for The Cavalier Daily, U.Va.’s student newspaper, and then as a freelancer for Charlottesville Tomorrow, where she helped cover the Covid-19 pandemic. Her reporting at The Cavalier Daily has dealt with the aftermath of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rallies, including coverage of an anniversary protest in 2018 for which she and her team won an award from the Virginia Press Association. She is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.