COLUMBIA – The Voice’s Publisher Barbara Ball was awarded one of the S.C. Press Association’s top annual awards for government reporting last weekend during the Association’s two-day annual meeting held at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
Ball was named recipient of the Jim Davenport Award for Excellence in Government Reporting. The award, which comes with a $1,000 check, is presented to one reporter in South Carolina each year.
The award is named in memory of the late Jim Davenport, a tenacious reporter for the Associated Press, who was known for his fair and aggressive coverage of state government and political matters. During his years with The Associated Press, Davenport cultivated sources because those he covered respected his ethics, his compassion, his tireless work ethic and his desire to hold those in power accountable for their actions.
The award is endowed by Meg Kinnard, national politics reporter for the Associated Press, because of Davenport’s profound influence on her career. Kinnard moderated the first in a series of 2024 presidential campaign forums for the Associated Press at Georgetown University as well as last year’s first Presidential debate in Atlanta.
“Barbara Ball embodies the traits that I admired most in Jim’s reporting,” Kinnard said when presenting the award. “It’s holding local and state officials accountable, and it’s bringing information about what is going on to audiences without fear or favor, giving objective information – the absolute value of the facts – so audiences can figure out how they feel about an issue.”
Kinnard said what stood out about Ball’s work is the ability to go really deep on an issue, to follow something through the process, not just one day or two days, but to track an issue from its beginning to its resolution.
The contest is judged by former South Carolina journalists and a representative of the Associated Press. Criteria for judging includes enterprise, writing quality and effectiveness in explaining state and local government matters as well as holding public officials and elected leaders accountable. Judges evaluate how each nominee demonstrates fair, ethical, and aggressive reporting.
Ball’s stories also won first place in the Enterprise Reporting category, second place in Government Beat Reporting, and third place in both Growth and Development Reporting and Short Story writing.
She was also elected to serve a second term as Vice President of the S. C. Press Association. More than 200 daily and weekly newspaper journalists attended the annual meeting.
