A newsroom opened in Travelers Rest this week. Three times a day, it reads you the news straight and tells you where it came from.
There was no ribbon. On Monday, October 19, a short newscast went up on YouTube and Spotify from a desk in Travelers Rest. By that evening there was a second edition; by Tuesday morning, a third. The Wareham Wire is on the air.
The Wire runs on a broadcast clock: a Morning Newsbreak and an Evening Newsbreak on video, and a midday edition in audio. Each is a few minutes of the day’s news — Ukraine, Washington, the markets, the night in sports — read straight, with the reporting credited in the read. NPR and the Associated Press do most of the heavy lifting, and the show says so out loud.
Tuesday’s Morning Newsbreak ran eleven minutes: the strike on the park in Nova Vodolaha, France filling its jails, fourteen days to the midterms, Alberta voting to stay in Canada, a Market Minute and the 49ers holding off Washington. That’s the shape of it. No panel. No yelling. One desk.
Each script is checked against the wire services before anyone sits down at the desk. Steve Wareham reads it to camera; LastGoonie Studios cuts it, captions it and posts it the same day.
The midday edition is the one to know about: it’s read by Steve’s voice clone from his own script, the episode says so, and he closes it in his own voice. The mornings and evenings are read by Steve himself, at the desk.
“Love will find a way. Keep the faith.”— Steve Wareham, signing off the Morning Newsbreak
Greenville has its paper, its TV stations and its radio. Now it has a one-desk broadcast up the road in Travelers Rest that posts before breakfast. A city’s culture is also how it hears the news, and this is a new way to hear it.
Full disclosure: The Wareham Wire comes from our own house. It’s read by Steve Wareham, who writes this magazine with Jenn Wareham; it’s produced by LastGoonie Studios, whose films appear in these pages; and the Wire, the studio and Greenville Reels all belong to AvoTech, which sponsors the show.