AP Reporter Jim Davenport dies

AP Reporter Jim Davenport dies

I saw this news first in an article on The State newspaper, which burns a bit.
Jim Davenport was always smiling. Except when he was on a story, and he was dogged and serious beyond belief.
I once had an editor tell me I was an iconoclast. I had to look it up. It's someone who shatters deeply held beliefs. But that was Jim, actually.
Journalists have a saying. "If you're Grandma says she loves you, check it out."
That was Jim. He would work a story to the bone, and if it was true, overwhelm you with the facts. If it wasn't, once he knew for sure it wasn't, he would happily move on to the next, none the wiser probably that they had Jim Davenport on their heels.
So why does it burn to read it from The State? Two reasons.
First, there is a widely held misconception that Gina Smith of The State is the reporter who took former S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford out over his scandalous trip to Venezuela on Father's Day weekend to see his paramour.
Gina Smith is a decent reporter. She was the one at the airport when Sanford got off the plane. But she doesn't flip a coin with a fellow reporter to see who got to drive down to Atlanta to meet that plane if not for Jim Davenport's initial reporting on this story. Jim broke it wide open. He got the first tip about Sanford being missing in action a few years back. He broke open his list of phone numbers and got cranking. In his list was a direct line to the island home of the first family, and he talked to former First Lady Jenny Sanford, who told him she had no idea where her husband was. The direct quotes he got and used were tantalizing enough that it put other reporters on the trail.
Jim Davenport, before and after, owned that story because he got the scoop. He later built a ton of additional scoops on top of it, about Sanford's use of state planes and private planes to travel. In the end,
It's not a knock on Gina Smith. Just the fundamental way I understand scoops and building stories.
Gov. Mark Sanford had to pay what still remains the biggest ethics fine in state history, and that started because Jim Davenport asked questions.
That's all he did, really. Ask questions. If the answers were -- if the truh was -- that Mark Sanford had used those planes and traveled completely in accord with state policy and law, there's no story. But Sanford did otherwise, and Jim's questions led to the truth being revealed. Again.
The second reason it burns, a little like indigestion, is that a prior story run in the The State about Jim Davenport receiving the Order of the Palmetto for his work, written by The State, showed them taking a little pride in Jim's award. Jim used to work for The State, you see.
He started out as a business reporter, but moved over into government coverage. He has made his mark, at the AP, as a government reporter. Why not at The State?
Many years back, as some friends and I gathered, with Jim, to have a night of poker and steaks in remembrance of another mutual friend who had passed on, Jim told me why he had left the state.
I only have his version, but I tend to believe it, having run into, on other occasions, some of the others involved. Let's just say his editor wouldn't let Jim be Jim and ask questions about a political ad being run by  former Gov. Jim Hodges. Jim wanted to "truth squad" the ad.
It might not have led to a different result in the election. But the voters would have been better served had the questionable ad been vetted.
Jim was out the door pretty soon afterward, because his bosses didn't back him up. 13 years at the Associated Press have proved The State made a pretty stupid decision.
Jim didn't want to vet the ad because he was a Republican trying to slam a Democrat. There are plenty of Republicans, Sanford included, who would say they are sure Jim was a Democrat because of the way he went after them. But he was never going after them. He was going after the truth. He didn't take sides, ever. He just asked questions, and he sent an example for most reporters in this state that they sadly do not come close to living up to.
That example, through countless stories, was something Jim gave me time and time again.
I can only say I did one thing for Jim. Well, other than helping him proof some pages and copy editing one very poorly written story for Portfolio Magazine at the University of South Carolina, back in the day.
The official story from the AP says that Jim Davenport organized the "first" audit of public officials' compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. That is true, but leaves out important information. Jim Davenport organized ALL the audits of the public officials' compliance with the FOIA. When I was editor at The People-Sentinel in Barnwell, I got a call from Jim Davenport or from Bill Rogers, executive director of the S.C. Press Association, asking if we would be willing to cooperate in a project.
Essentially, our reporters would go to communities that we never covered and would ask for records at police, sheriff's departments, county, city and school government offices. We would ask for records we know would have to be turned over immediately, and see what happened.
Reporters from other communities would come to Barnwell and Allendale counties and do the same. Because while the FOIA exists for the public at large, it is used primarily by media outlets and reporters tend to get treated more favorably than the public at large. That's what we learned.
That was back in the '90s.
In the 2000s, Jim decided we ought to do it again.
They did all the counties in the state except one, because something happened to a person. Because Rogers knew I had worked in Chesterfield County from 1994 to 1997, he knew I would know where to go to get some information. So I drove over to Chesterfield, went to the courthouse, the Sheriff's Office and asked for some routine police reports that would have to be turned over. I did not get them.
It gave Jim and crew another piece of data for the second audit of public officials compliance with the law.
Jim believed in freedom of information, and he didn't just complain about being personally stonewalled at time, which is what most newspapers and most reporters do. He did something about it. He got hundreds of people involved asking questions and proved that the FOIA is not quite followed as it ought to be.
A publisher boss of mine once told me while we preparing some background information on a local humanitarian type fellow who was dying that it issad we always wait for their deaths to run those stories.
"They should smell the roses," he said.
I said I don't have to wait until he died to run it. But I did have some more information to gather and that person did not get to smell the roses, unfortunately.
Jim got to smell the roses, I believe.
The one thing I did for Jim, after participating in that FOIA audit and hearing a couple of names of people that were going to be recognized by the S.C. Press Association, was mention to Bill Rogers that we should do something to recognize Jim Davenport. I didn't know what, but I made my feelings known.
I later heard from someone, somewhere, the SCPA had indeed given a special award to Jim Davenport.
Jim's obituary makes mention he was awarded the Order of the Palmetto. I am frankly surprised Gov. Nikki Haley went to such lengths to award it to him personally. It says she actually went to his house and visited with him for more than an hour before giving him the award. My wife thinks it went so long because Jim probably took the opportunity to grill her about something.
The Order of the Palmetto is the top award that can be given to a civilian in South Carolina for service to the state. With the short shrift given to the media these days, particularly to newspaper folk, particularly by conservatives, it is a stunning testament to his ability to do his job with excellence both in coverage and excellence in being fair.
My college experience with him was of him as the editor of Portfolio. A literary magazine with some reporting in it. His predecessor tried to make it more newsy. He continued that. His successors tried it to. So, as his obit says, he caught the news bug at USC. I can't say I was there when the greatness began. I think I was down the hall a couple of doors, however, when greatness began.
He was this goofball, with this huge smile, his eyes hidden behind the thickest Coke-bottle glasses on the planet. My picture of the man is him sitting at a dive of a rental house, under the water tower in Columbia, just off campus, staring at his poker cards, laughing as he or one of us recited a friend's mantra at the beginning of each hand.
That goofball I remember, that is the man, just a bud among drinking buddies. I can't believe he is gone.
But the byline, "By Jim Davenport, The Associated Press." I am thunderstruck that that awesome one is gone.
South Carolina is poorer for this loss.
When you seem him, Jim, say hello to Son, and I hope you have some nickels.
"Five will get you in the game."
RIP.