Scott Hudson: The view inside some of this year’s top stories
Back in the days when newspapers were print only, it was impossible to determine what stories readers found most interesting. However, in the internet age, every click is recorded, and it is easy to figure out which headlines garner the most interest.
Sometimes, the results are surprising.
As the Senior Reporter for The Augusta Press, I really do not have a set beat to follow. Naturally, I am always at Augusta Commission meetings, and I do get assigned to cover press conferences; however, my job is far from a routine gig.
A lot of the time, I research and write stories that interest me in hopes that our readers might also be interested. Sometimes I’m wrong. Not many people cared about the Japanese water garden story.
Over the past year, I have written about politicians, local business, history and historic figures with ties to Augusta, court cases, government corruption, routine city business, crime and lizards…yes, lizards.
There are recent stories, such as the look back on Fat Man’s Forest that we know received a ton of interest due to the number of comments made, but they are too recent to make a top five list.
Here are the top five stories throughout 2021 that I wrote according to the tracking data, some of them may surprise you too.
5. Iconic South Augusta restaurant will not reopen
When I first spoke with Garrett Fulcher, the longtime owner of T’s Restaurant, in September, I sensed something was wrong. I called Fulcher to talk about the new Downtown T’s that was opening in North Augusta, but I also wanted to get an update on the Mike Padgett Highway location of T’s Restaurant that still sat shuttered after a kitchen fire caused massive damage the year before.
While Fulcher was eager to provide details on Downtown T’s, he seemed more guarded about the original restaurant that had operated in south Augusta for more than 50 years. As I pressed Fulcher, he told me that he really didn’t want to talk about the south Augusta location and disclosed that he could not give a timeline on reopening because he was not sure if that would ever happen.
“Look, we are just taking this day by day, but I just don’t know what’s going to happen, I really don’t,” Fulcher said.
I felt profoundly sad for Fulcher and promised him that I would not print anything until he decided to make an announcement.
As someone who worked in the restaurant industry for many years, I know that replacing a decades-old kitchen is not an easy prospect. While kitchen equipment is designed to last almost forever, building codes change over time and older restaurants are grandfathered in with the old codes as long as they remain safe.
From our conversation, I got the feeling that Fulcher was being faced with literally having to tear the entire building down and start from scratch.
Sadly, my hunch was correct, and just a month after our conversation, Fulcher announced that the original T’s Restaurant was history.
4. City of Augusta prevails in legal battle with strip clubs
While I knew that there was certainly public interest in the story of Broad Street’s strip clubs, as the battle to have them removed from downtown had gone on for many years, I was a little surprised to see it make the top five.
In hindsight, though, I can understand why the interest as the story dealt with free speech, law, community morals, land value and, of course, sex.
As a reporter, I visited the Discotheque Lounge to try and get a comment from the management on the lawsuit and had to chuckle a little at what I saw. On the day I visited, the dancers were clad only in face masks.
3. Troubled waters at the Augusta Aquatics Center
One of the basic rules for reporting is that you never look at a meeting agenda to predetermine what you will be writing about.
Generally speaking, delegations before the Augusta Commission are not newsworthy events.
Indeed, on July 28, Rebecca Harper of the Aiken Augusta Swim League was listed as a delegation to give a report on the Augusta Aquatics Center. Generally, such a five-minute presentation is for the delegation to promote themselves or announce a grant they had won.
Harper’s presentation was the opposite, it was a scathing report of the problems the swim league had faced under the administration of Parks and Recreation Director Maurice McDowell.
As Harper talked, I looked around the room to see if any of the other reporters present were paying attention. Most of them were staring intently into their cell phones.
At the conclusion, I waited for Harper to leave the chambers and made a beeline to her in the lobby. After interviewing Harper, I called Sylvia Cooper to make sure she was watching the meeting remotely so I could leave.
“Yes, I’m still here taking notes. Are you leaving?” Sylvia asked.
I explained that I needed to get to the Aquatics Center before it closed to document what Harper had told me.
“You go get ‘em, I’ll stay here and take notes,” Sylvia said.
Sure enough, it all turned out to be true, and we ran the story the following morning. Two days later, the rest of the media caught up with the story and ran their own “exclusives.”
2. Another invasive species identified in Georgia and South Carolina
Ah, the lizard story.
While tooling around the internet, I came across a press release from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources warning of the threat posed by the tegu. The tegu is a giant lizard that grows to over four feet in length and weighs 10 pounds.
In following up on the story, I was able to get Savannah Riverkeeper Tonya Bonitatibus on record advising people to shoot the lizard on sight, if possible, which was something I found hilarious.
I finished up the story and sent it to our publisher, Joe Edge.
“I like this, it’s a good story. It’s not a Sunday or Monday headline, but it’s a good story,” he told me.
Then, as they say, ‘boom goes the dynamite.’
Two weeks later in our Monday morning staff meeting, Joe asked the staff if anyone could take a guess at what our biggest trending story still was.
“Let me guess,” Dana Lynn McIntyre said. “Scott’s lizard story.”
1. Murders unsolved in Augusta: The Felycya Harris homicide
When my co-writer Anna Virella and I happened upon the somewhat cold case involving the slaying of Felycya Harris, I remember commenting that the killing looked like something out of Hollywood script.
A transgender woman who was becoming a “star” as an international media influencer on the internet with a somewhat salacious side gig is found murdered in broad daylight just sounds made up for television.
However, after diving into the police reports, witness testimonies, autopsy records and visiting various scenes connected to the homicide, I really began to see Harris as not some character in an outlandish drama but a real person.
Harris had issues, most certainly, but she also had a loving and supportive family, a ton of friends, a promising career and a long life ahead before she was brutally slain and violated after death by onlookers taking photos of her body and posting them to the internet.
Harris’ mother found out about her child’s slaying from Twitter and that fact just broke my heart.
In our research, Anna and I found information related to the case that obviously was not under the scrutiny of law enforcement. We both agreed that we were human beings and citizens first and journalists second.
The decision was made to release everything we had to law enforcement beforehand and get permission to publish material that might be crucial to the investigation.
We decided to censor ourselves if it meant justice might eventually be found for Felycya Harris.
At that time, Sheriff Richard Roundtree had instituted a policy that no one in the department was to cooperate with The Augusta Press and everyone in the department followed Roundtree’s directive including Investigator Randall Amos who was assigned to the Harris case.
Unlike his superiors, though, Amos answers his phone and he answered it every time I called him. Amos would simply say, “you got something for me?” Then he would listen intently, never injecting and never offering up information on his own. Amos followed the Sheriff’s protocol to the letter.
However, Amos would end every call with “I really appreciate it man, call me anytime.”
An arrest was recently made in the case of Felycya Harris, and while I do not know what impact our body of information had in leading to the arrest, the fact that it garnered such public interest most definitely got tongues wagging and cleared the way for the police to ride a tidal wave towards justice.
I must say that I am not surprised the Harris story was the most read story of last year, it was shared all over social media by people in our community who wanted justice to take place for one of our own.
But the lizard story? I am still surprised at that one.
