After you read this story, you might be overcome by envy toward Holly Bounds Jackson. And if it weren’t for the fact that she is so genuinely nice, I wouldn’t blame you. As we sat for lunch recently at her beloved Jim ’N’ Nicks in Bluffton, even Holly conceded that, in many ways, she’s led a storybook life.
She knew she wanted to be a reporter at age eight and made it so. She married her high school sweetheart from Bishopville. In an industry known for going wherever the job is, she vowed she would never move more than three hours from her hometown and has mostly and improbably executed that promise.
And now, after a ton of hustle and hard work during bookend star turns in Savannah, with a brief stop in Tampa in between, she has her dream job at the station where her career began. “It has all been a blessing. I have plenty of industry friends still climbing, still trying to find a home,” said the director of operations for SCETV’s Beaufort affiliate, ETV Lowcountry. “I’ve had incredible mentors, made so many friends and tried hard to truly make a home here.”
This flawlessly fulfilled plan must be the doing of some mystical mastermind, right? “I wish,” she said with a laugh between bites of collards. “I’ve had a good run in a choose-your-own-adventure story, but I’m far from the family brains.”
Growing up in the town of 3,000 residents 160 miles north of the Lowcountry up I-95, Bounds Jackson was the social butterfly while her sister Heather was the book-smart salutatorian who later became a schoolteacher.
“I left my bookbag in the car most days when I got home, I was on the phone all night with friends,” Bounds Jackson said. “Or I was dialing into our one radio station so I could hear my voice on the air.”
Just one problem. It was an oldies station.
“I didn’t know any songs to request, so I asked my mom and she told me to try ‘Duke of Earl,’” she said. “So, I’d call every day, and I became known as the ‘Duke of Earl’ girl. I’d call up if my dog went missing and folks would help me. It was that kind of community—just good folks.”
In third grade, a teacher assigned her class to watch the news and come back and talk about it. “I loved the news, got addicted to watching it right then and there,” Bounds Jackson said.
The same teacher spotlighted her writing about her best friend—put her work on display in the hallway. “She brought people over to look at it, and I loved that feeling that someone said I was a good writer,” Bounds Jackson said. “It was right then that I said, ‘This is what I’m going to be when I grow up.’”
That was solidified by the local newspaper editor who taught her seventh grade journalism class. “She hired me to write. I got $10 an article, and that was incredible—got that up to $25 per article before I graduated,” Bounds Jackson said. “I realized that I love being the one in the know. I loved being the one to inform people.”
Soon after, a childhood friendship turned romantic when she went on her first date with Brian Jackson at age 14. The two remained close as they went separate ways for college.
It was at USC in Columbia that Bounds Jackson pivoted from print to the camera. “With writing, you have to nail every detail with words,” she said. “In TV news, you have a minute and 10 seconds to give the key points, tell the bigger story without getting into too many specifics, and the visuals tell a lot of the details,” she explained.
Most importantly, capturing the humanity in a story was much more direct on screen. “I really treasure that if I’m sitting with someone and they cry or smile or laugh in answering a question; it’s right there for the viewer,” she said. “There is no filter, no middleman relaying that. You see the emotions and hear them; you see immediately how news is impacting people.”
Bounds Jackson set up a job search grid, looking to places like Augusta and Albany, Ga., as career starting points. A Gamecock alum came to class shortly before her December 2004 graduation, said he had two gigs to fill at a station in Beaufort.
“My best friend and classmate at the time, Trey Paul, we both went for the jobs. I’d never been to Beaufort. The closest I’d ever gotten to the Lowcountry was Walterboro, but it sounded amazing,” she said. Paul, now an anchor in Myrtle Beach, got the WJWJ gig. Bounds Jackson did not … at first.
“They went with someone else, so I called the news director and just asked what I could do better for the next interview, how I could improve,” Bounds Jackson said. Her determination made an impression, and when the other candidate didn’t take the job, she was hired in March 2005.
“Trey and I had a blast. It was local news, and we had one 6 p.m. newscast. It was all about community, keeping people in the loop. It was so fulfilling,” she said. But the broadcast was an anomaly among SCETV stations and was cut a year later.
Bounds Jackson heard of an opening in Savannah and was hired to be the station’s Lowcountry reporter in 2006. She impressed quickly and became the anchor for an innovative experiment, a 7 p.m. newscast on WSAV’s sister station called “My Lowcountry 3.” The show put the focus on a region that was often a storytelling afterthought on the Savannah stations.
“I just remember putting so much work into stories that would be buried, run at 6:27, the last story,” she said. “And I would say, ‘This is big news to these people, ya’ll.’ To have that platform on My Lowcountry 3 gave us the chance to really showcase this community.”
Bounds Jackson endeared herself to Bluffton, Beaufort and Hilton Head Island viewers with equal parts personality and perspiration. Her WSAV-branded car was seemingly rolling nonstop up and down U.S. 278 and out Route 170 in 2007.
My Lowcountry 3 only lasted one year, but Bounds Jackson made a lasting impression on locals for championing their news. The feeling was mutual.
“I made lifelong friends that year. I took such pride in giving the Lowcountry the spotlight it deserves. The news directors and producers pay more attention to this side of the bridge, and I’m proud to be part of that evolution. This area became part of my heart.”
Holly and Brian, the Bishopville kids, whose moms went to elementary school together, married in 2007 and bought a home in Bluffton. The newly-minted Holly Bounds Jackson made the commute to Savannah, anchored a 5 p.m. newscast for a year and stayed with the station until 2013.
When her first child, Sofie Beth, was born, she decided to try her hand at PR. “Nope, not for me,” she said of the six-month detour. “I am a news junkie. I realized then and there I needed that in my life—I need to be telling stories, not spinning them.”
But that misstep drove home what makes practicing journalism so essential to her happiness. “The news is personal for me. Good news or soul-crushing stories, treating every story with energy, empathy and compassion means a lot to me,” she said. “Those connections … it’s not just turn-and-burn and on to the next story for me.”
Each Christmas Eve, she talks with Nelson Olivera, whose brother Carlos was murdered by Bluffton tow truck driver Preston Oates that night in 2011. It’s just one example of the unorthodox approach that her biggest boosters say made Bounds Jackson stand out in a sea of detached talking heads, more focused on ego, eyeballs and clicks, who have given media an ever-increasing stained reputation.
“Giving people a voice to tell their story, to give a platform to those who have not been heard before—it matters,” Bounds Jackson said.
So, with the support of Brian, she headed to Tampa to WFLA—a two-year stint that was the closest to ‘ladder climbing’ she has done in her career.
“It was endless work, long hours. Part of it was exhilarating; there was always news to be told,” she said. “The stories were wild. But I’d have Sofie Beth in the backseat watching ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ on my iPad while I was talking to sheriffs behind crime scene tape. The paycheck was nice, but that’s not the way I wanted to raise my kids.”
During a rare July 2015 weekend getaway to Fripp Island, Holly and Brian had a collective aha moment. They knew they needed to get back to the Lowcountry. A couple of months later, she was welcomed back on air at WSAV, but after being on the front line of covering two hurricanes, she realized it was time for a larger change.
“I remember leaving my girls to cover the hurricanes. It was dangerous. Is that the last time I’d see them? I just couldn’t stomach that feeling ever again,” she said. Just as that sentiment hit a crescendo in 2018, she got an email from a friend. There was a head honcho job open at WJWJ, now known as ETV Lowcountry.
“We wanted more kids. I needed a different pace, and this was perfect timing. I interviewed and got it, and it’s been the job of a lifetime—back where this dream started. It doesn’t get much better,” she said.
Bounds Jackson is the host of “By the River,” the SCETV showcase of Southern authors. She also produces longer-form interviews and documentaries, like the one-hour look inside the innovative rehabilitation approach of the Allendale Correctional Institution.
“I spent a year inside the prison, saw how they focused on character building. I taught writing classes. I started a Scrabble club with the inmates. It was a life-changing and eye-opening experience,” she said.
ETV Lowcountry’s offices are on the Beaufort campus of the Technical College of the Lowcountry. USCB partners with ETV and uses the studio for classes. The students help produce By The River by running camera, scrolling teleprompter, and arranging interviews. Occasionally, Bounds Jackson speaks to the class about the profession and answers career-related questions.
“It’s a chance for me to pass on my experience, to share a bigger picture that I wish others had talked to me about when I was starting,” she said. “My 22-year-old self, I was all about the next story. I couldn’t see kids, marriage. I had a career plan, period. Family means everything to me, but that all felt so far down the road. It was job, job, job, and it wasn’t fulfilling. Brian, my kids, that’s life.”
The thrill of telling stories is as strong as ever for her, but while her industry friends chase the next big market and paycheck, Bounds Jackson finds the same adrenaline rush in selling Girl Scout Cookies with Sofie.
“The first year, 400 boxes was the goal. Then it was 800. This year, the prize was a cooking class, and she wanted it,” Bounds Jackson said. “And I was like, ‘Well you’re getting that cooking class!’ And we were out every day, every weekend pushing cookies. I’m hooked.
She’s grateful to have the gem job that feeds her career goals while allowing her to be present daily to witness the drive and passion of her daughters, eight-year-old Sofie Beth, four-year-old Gloria, three-year-old Penny and 16-month-old Ruby Lee.
“Sofie Beth can cook and bake anything; she cooks salmon for dinner and it’s amazing. And Glo, she literally wants to be fashion; she’s a diva who lives to be photographed,” said the proud mom.
Her affinity for ETV has been driven home during the pandemic. “Three of us got the virus at home. It was rough and ETV could not have been more supportive as I’ve been Mom and schoolteacher and quarantine entertainer while still doing my job.”
Bounds Jackson knows that both her career path and the manner she gets to practice her craft these days are fortunate aberrations. “I worry for the next generation of journalists—the short attention, the stories getting shorter, the whole definition of what’s news shifting with all the social media news breakers,” she said. “I get to tell stories than can breathe, and that’s a gift. So, I know what I have here, and I’m very thankful.”
