Staff report
palmettoreport@gmail.com

(Rock Hill, S.C.) — This week, the Palmetto Report posted its 500th student produced news story — covering Winthrop University, Rock Hill and York County — with a story about PETA protesting the new Raising Cane’s.

The site, which was started by Dr. Joseph Kasko as a way to promote student work, has attracted over 100,000 views and more than 53,000 unique visitors since it was created during the fall 2018 semester.

Roughly two-thirds of the stories on the Palmetto Report cover the Winthrop campus and the remaining third cover the surrounding community. The site also features more 230 video reports and 118 podcasts.

“It’s really amazing to see how far the site has come over the last eight years,” said Kasko, an associate professor of mass communication at Winthrop and the editor of the Palmetto Report. “I’ve been watching the stats over the last few weeks, as we’ve been getting closer and closer to 500 publications, and it feels like a real milestone.”

Students in roughly seven different classes have the opportunity to contribute their work to the site. However, most of the stories come from multimedia reporting and TV production courses.

“I really just enjoy highlighting the successes and creativity of our students,” Kasko said. “It also gives them a portfolio of work, which they can use to apply for jobs or internships.”

There are many former students, who have contributed to the site, who are now reporting for television news, print media or multimedia news sites. However, others now work in public relations, marketing or some other communication field.

Kasko said one of his favorite stories on the site was about Jeuel Bannister Esmacher, a 1944 Winthrop graduate who took cryptology courses at the school and later worked as a code breaker for the U.S. Army.

Esmacher, who passed away in 2022, was featured in the 2017 best-selling book, “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II.”

“I didn’t know about that story until a student pitched the idea in my multimedia storytelling class,” Kasko said. “And after a little bit of research I learned that many women at Winthrop were trained as code breakers during the 1940s, in order to aid the war effort.”

Esmacher’s story was also recorded as an oral history for Winthrop’s digital archives.

“I’m proud that I was able to serve in that capacity,” Esmacher told the Palmetto Report in 2021. “During the war everybody was so patriotic. You wanted to do anything that you could to help out our (military) services, so I’m happy about it.”

Audrey Burriss, the student who produced the podcast, was a neighbor of Esmacher in Anderson, S.C. Burriss graduated from Winthrop in 2023 with a degree in social work and now works as a hospice social worker in Denver.

Kasko said another memorable story was when the Palmetto Report was able to interview former President Dan Mahony after he left Winthrop to become the president of the Southern Illinois University system, because many people felt he was forced out by the Board of Trustees.

“That was exciting, because our reporter Tate Walden was able to get an exclusive interview with Mahony after he left and no one else had that. And Mahony basically confirmed to us that the board didn’t renew his contract and he was forced to find another job, which I don’t think anyone else was really able to confirm, because his negotiations with the board were conducted behind closed doors,” Kasko said.

“Frankly I was little concerned that people would think I was abandoning them or leaving for reasons that I was unhappy with them at Winthrop, the people, the faculty, staff and students. That was obviously not the case,” Mahony told the Palmetto Report in 2020.

“I just remember being really proud of Tate (Walden) for getting that interview and how proud I was that our site had something no one else was able to get,” he said.

Walden graduated from Winthrop in 2022 with a degree in mass communication. He has worked in TV news in Charlotte and Charleston and also operates his own photography business.

The most viewed stories all-time on the Palmetto Report include:

1) Only 20 red wolves remain in the wild in the Carolinas, by Kevin Seabrook, which is about some of the efforts to save the endangered animals. It’s also one of the most watched stories on the Palmetto Report YouTube channel.

Seabrook graduated in 2021 with a degree in mass communication and now works in marketing in Charlotte, but conservation efforts have always been important to him.

2) WU students admit paying others to attend cultural events, by Cheyenne Walsh, which is about a black market for event credit at Winthrop.

This story sort of went viral in 2019, drawing thousands of hits over a few days, after many former students and the Winthrop Alumni Association shared the story on social media.

Walsh graduated in 2019 with a degree in mass communications and now works in marketing as an search engine optimization analyst in Charleston.

3) Winthrop plans to demolish Richardson, Wofford halls, by Ainsley McCarthy, which is about the school’s efforts to tear down the two former high-rise buildings.

McCarthy graduated with a mass communication degree in 2024 and now works as a marketing coordinator for BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina in Columbia. She’s also a former editor in chief of the Johnsonian student newspaper.

4) Rock Hill thrift store works to support community, by Trey Brownlee, which is about a second-hand store operated by a Rock Hill church.

Brownlee said he it was “really cool” to hear that one of his stories was one of the most viewed.

“Wow that’s awesome. It makes me wish I had done a better job,” he joked. “I’m surprised that’s the fourth top story.”

Brownlee said reporting for student media helped to prepare him for a career in journalism.

“It definitely helped me out. That was my introduction into news and story telling,” he said.

Brownlee graduated with a degree in mass communication in 2022 and now works as a news photographer in Charlotte. Last month, he started a new job at WSOC-TV, after working for three years at WCCB Charlotte’s CW.

5) Fort Mill family reunited after 10-month adoption ordeal, by Evan Santiago, which is about a family’s efforts to bring their adopted son home from Nigeria.

Santiago graduated in 2021 and currently works in marketing in New York. He formerly was a reporter for the Charlotte Observer.

“I’m just really proud of our current and former students and the work we’ve done together,” Kasko said. “We’re trying to do our best to cover our community and report on some of the stories that might not otherwise be told.

“I think the power of independent media, including student media, is the ability to give a voice to the voiceless and cover people and underserved groups who often don’t get the attention they deserve,” he said.

“I’m not sure what the next 500 stories will look like, but I know it will be exciting to continue to watch our students learn and grow in a real-world environment. I hope the Palmetto Report will continue to provide a platform for our student journalists to showcase their work and to provide some important news and information for our community.”