Warren Bolton
Warren Bolton’s insightful, fair and balanced commentary has been a catalyst for progressive and positive change in the community for almost a decade as associate editor at The State newspaper. He is among a small percentage of African Americans in similar roles at daily newspapers in the country.
Bolton began his distinguished journalism career in 1986 as a reporter with the Columbia Record. In 1988, he joined The State and covered county government for six years, and in more than nine years as a reporter, covered education, police, courts and the Legislature. He served as assistant night news editor as well as an assistant assigning editor before becoming an assigning editor in 1996. He became education editor in April 1997, and a month later, joined The State’s Editorial Board, its first ever African-American member. He was promoted to associate editor in January 2000.
He has received numerous awards recognizing his accomplishments including the Columbia Urban League’s Lincoln C. Jenkins Jr. award for community service and the Community Service Award from the Midlands Association of Black Journalists in 1998, the top column writing award from the S.C. Press Association as well as the Ambrose E. Gonzales Award for excellence in journalism, given by The State in 2000, and the 2008 Press Association’s E.A. Ramsaur award, given to the top editorial writer in South Carolina.
Bolton is also an associate minister and member at Bethel AME Church in Columbia, where he and his wife, Tanya, co-chair the church’s Married Couples Ministry. The Boltons are proud parents of two sons, Alexander and Christopher. Active in the community, he has volunteered at the Department of Juvenile Justice, the United Way and the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Midlands. A Columbia native and University of South Carolina graduate, he is the youngest of 11 children born to the late Bertha Mae Bolton.