Introducing the Beaufort Current: A new voice for a stronger, more connected community

Today is the day!

We are excited to officially announce the launch of the Beaufort Current, the newest website and eNewsletter in our growing family of South Carolina publications. Our first eNewsletter went out this morning, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome Beaufort to the Who’s On The Move network.

If you’re from the Upstate, you may recognize the name of our new publisher, Robin Blackwood. A longtime Greenville resident, Robin and her family moved to Beaufort in the summer of 2025. Her connection to the area goes back generations. Raised in Orangeburg, both of Robin’s parents grew up in Beaufort. As a child, she visited her grandmother at the historic Castle on the Point and learned about Clarendon, the working farm where her father grew up along the Whale Branch and Broad rivers.

Robin brings more than 30 years of experience in public relations and strategic communications, helping businesses and organizations of all sizes tell their stories. We’ve known Robin for more than 15 years and have seen firsthand her professionalism, integrity and commitment to community. When she decided to make her home in the Lowcountry, this sparked conversations about bringing our digital publishing model to Beaufort, focusing on connecting the people, businesses and nonprofits of Beaufort, Port Royal, Lady’s Island and St. Helena Island.

We couldn’t ask for a better partner to launch the Beaufort Current.

Why we’re doing this

When we launched Who’s On The Move 20 years ago, we believed there was an opportunity to create a different kind of local media company. One that focused on the people and organizations moving our communities forward.

That belief is stronger today than ever.

Growing across South Carolina

With the launch of the Beaufort Current, our network now serves seven South Carolina markets: Columbia, Greenville, Charleston, Laurens County, Georgetown County, the Golden Strip communities of Mauldin, Simpsonville and Fountain Inn, and now Beaufort.

Traffic across our websites has increased 150% over the past year, which tells us there is a growing appetite for this kind of local information.

We think the media landscape needs some fresh thinking. Increasingly, the information we consume is selected for us by social media algorithms. Important local stories can get lost in the noise, while negative or sensational headlines dominate our feeds.

We want to do something different.

Our mission is simple: lift up local communities by highlighting the people, businesses and organizations doing good things.

We’re not interested in crime reports or political battles. There are plenty of other places to find those stories. We want to shine a light on new businesses, economic development, nonprofit initiatives, community events, interesting people and the ideas helping our communities grow.

We also believe local news should be easy to find, easy to read and accessible to everyone.

That’s why we’ve built our publications around a few principles that are important to us.

• Our eNewsletters are free. They always have been and always will be. Just subscribe and we’ll deliver local news directly to your inbox.
• No paywalls. We believe people should be able to access important community information without paying for a subscription.
• No clutter. We’re tired of visiting websites where the content is buried beneath pop-up advertisements and distractions. Our websites are designed to be clean, simple and easy to navigate.
• We respect your privacy. We will never sell or share our subscriber email lists with outside parties. Never have, never will.
• Your stories are welcomed. Businesses, nonprofits and community organizations can register on our websites and post their own news, events and job openings at no charge. We believe everyone deserves an opportunity to share what they’re doing.

We’re excited to work alongside Robin to build something meaningful for the Beaufort community.

If you are reading this in Beaufort, we encourage you to subscribe, share your news, tell your friends and help spread the word.

If your business is growing, your organization has an announcement or you simply have a good story to tell, reach out to Robin at [email protected].

We believe there are great stories happening all around us, every day. They deserve to be told.

Check out the Beaufort Current!

Alan Cooper and Cheryl Cooper
Publishers, Who’s On The Move