Sidney L. "Sid" Salter is Director of Public Affairs at Mississippi State University.
The Office of Public Affairs serves as MSU's print, broadcast and multimedia newsroom, social media platform, strategic marketing and advertising agency, photography and videography studio, and graphic design operation. Public Affairs is also charged with managing and populating MSU's website, rapid response to outside media requests, and the management of crisis information during emergencies. He also is the administrator of MSU's campus radio station, WMSV-FM, and the University Television Center.
Salter has been a Mississippi syndicated political columnist for more than 30 years. In 2011, he wrote the biography: "Jack Cristil: Voice of the MSU Bulldogs."
MSU's 2004 National Alumnus of the Year, Salter was a John C. Stennis Scholar in Political Science as a student. After 15 years as publisher and editor of the Scott County Times in Forest, he left the weekly newspaper to become Perspective Editor at the Jackson Clarion-Ledger for a decade. Salter also hosted a statewide talk radio show on the SuperTalk Mississippi Radio Network.
In addition to teaching and writing at MSU as the university's first journalist in residence in 2011-12, Salter was the first journalist to hold the Kelly Gene Cook Chair in Journalism at the University of Mississippi in the 1990s. He has been honored for lifetime contributions to journalism by the University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi University for Women - and has been honored for both print and broadcast journalism by the Associated Press.
He is a two-time winner of the J. Oliver Emmerich Editorial Excellence Award, considered the premier honor of the Mississippi Press Association. Salter is also a member of the MPA's Hall of Fame and a past MPA president. He is a past winner of the Mississippi Farm Bureau's "Agriculture Ambassador" Award and a past member of the board of directors of the Mississippi Economic Council and the MSU Alumni Association.
Salter is a member of the board of directors of Community Bancshares of Mississippi, Inc., a $2.4 billion multi-bank holding company that operates in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Florida as Community Bank.
Salter and his wife, Leilani, are the parents of four grown children and have four grandchildren. They are members of the First United Methodist Church in Starkville.
- Chief Communications Officer & Director