The Item

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A history of The Item, South Carolina's first small town daily newspaper, is not complete without mention of The Watchman and Southron, its antecedent, which was the creation of N.G. Osteen, the patriarch of the family that owns and operates the newspaper today. Noah Graham Osteen began his career in the newspaper business at the age of 12, when he joined The Sumter Watchman in 1855 as an apprentice. After completing his apprenticeship in 1861, he moved to Conway, to run a newspaper started by the owners of The Watchman, H.L. Darr and A.A. Gilbert. The newspaper, the Horry Dispatch, was discontinued in 1862 because of the upheaval caused by the Civil War. Mr. Osteen worked for awhile in Columbia at a printing company, and following the war, joined a newspaper in Charleston, Carolinian