Hall of Fame | Hubert Osteen

Hubert Duvall Osteen Jr. loved newspapers, but he especially appreciated the hard work of the many talented and colorful people who produced The Sumter (S.C.) Item throughout his life.

From wide-eyed new reporters to hardened, ink-stained pressmen, he worked alongside them all throughout a long and successful career in Sumter.

Born in 1936, he came of age watching his father and grandfather actively lead The Sumter (S.C.) Item on a daily basis, telling the stories of a community and encouraging its growth and progress through community news and advertising.

Osteen, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 84, was part of an iconic generation of American journalists who participated in and helped guide the progression of the newspaper industry from linotype and offset printing to the digital age of today.

A past president of the S.C. Press Association, he was both an experienced teacher and avid practitioner of daily editorial excellence, demonstrating those qualities to his three sons, his grandchildren, and the hundreds of young journalists who worked in his Sumter newsroom over the years.

Countless among them have gone on to leadership roles both in and out of the newspaper industry.

He began working summers at the family’s newspaper at the age of 13.

After graduating from Woodberry Forest School, a boarding school in Virginia, he earned degrees from two of the most prestigious journalism schools in the nation: a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri, and a master’s from Columbia University in New York.

Between those experiences he served a three-year stint in the U.S. Air Force that took him from Edwards Air Force Base in California, to Korea and Vietnam. As an Air Force information officer, he had regular professional contact with some of the most prestigious journalists of the era as they were reporting for the world’s major newspapers.

He officially joined The Sumter Item news staff in 1963 as a married young father, and worked in all newsroom capacities as a writer, editor and photographer before succeeding his father as publisher in 1987.

Osteen was the fourth of what are now six generations of the Osteen family involved in publishing, a family legacy dating back officially to 1855.

His willingness to invest in community publishing has led to Osteen Publishing Co. expanding nationally.

The work of current generations of the Osteen family include a variety of media and publishing pursuits in South Carolina, Florida, New Mexico, Alabama and New York.

Hubert Osteen had a deep appreciation of the work of those who came before him: His father Hubert Duvall Osteen Sr. (1904-1987); his grandfather Hubert Graham Osteen (1870-1955) founder of The Sumter Item; and his great-grandfather, Noah Graham Osteen (1843-1936) who became a printer’s apprentice at age 12 in 1855, founded The Watchman and Southron weekly newspaper in Sumter in 1881, and was instrumental in The Sumter Item’s beginnings in 1894.

All were lifelong newspaper men and community leaders, and all are now deserving members of the prestigious South Carolina Press Association Hall of Fame.