Sue Wilson named AP bureau chief for North Carolina, South Carolina

NEW YORK -- Sue Price Wilson, chief of bureau for The Associated Press in North Carolina, is adding South Carolina to her responsibilities, reviving a two-state territory the AP maintained until the 1970s.

Wilson, based in Raleigh, N.C., has managed AP operations in North Carolina since 1999. In South Carolina, she succeeds John Shurr, who was bureau chief in Columbia for 23 years.

The appointment was announced by John O. Lumpkin, the AP’s vice president/business operations for U.S. Newspaper Markets.

Wilson, a native of Goldsboro, N.C., joined the AP in 1976 in Raleigh as the state’s broadcast editor. In 1996, she became the bureau’s news editor. She was promoted to bureau chief in Raleigh in 1999.

A graduate of East Carolina University, Wilson worked at the Goldsboro News-Argus during her high school years and at The Daily Reflector in Greenville, N.C., while attending ECU.

Shurr, who spent 35 years in the AP, became bureau chief in South Carolina in 1984. He joined the AP in Oklahoma City in 1972 and worked in Indianapolis and Providence, R.I., before becoming Chicago assistant chief of bureau in 1979. He became bureau chief in Oklahoma City in 1981.

Shurr serves on the editorial board of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and has served as chairman of the South Carolina Press Association Freedom of Information committee since 1987. He negotiated rules to allow cameras in South Carolina courts and edited and compiled the “Freedom of Information Guide for Public Officials” in South Carolina.

He served 10 years on the steering committee for the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, a national clearinghouse for First Amendment and FOI information in Washington. He was a vice president of the First Amendment Congress, a national coalition of media groups dedicated to preserving free speech and press rights.

The AP’s operations in North Carolina and South Carolina were under one bureau chief until 1975.