One person has served as an executive for three of the four largest newspapers in North Dakota. Norman B. Black was publisher and general manager of the Grand Forks Herald, publisher of the The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, and president of the Minot Daily News. In 1933, when the North Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame was established, he became the initial inductee.

Norman Baldwin Black was born Sept. 27, 1865, to Alexander and Eliza (Baldwin) Black, in Port Hope, Canada. Alexander worked for the railroad, but with eight children, many of his offspring were required to find various jobs at an early age to help support the family. When the Port Hope Times began publication on Jan. 1, 1879, Norman was hired as a printer’s apprentice. After gaining valuable experience at the Times, he was hired as a printer for the Port Hope Evening Guide, a larger publication. Norman knew at an early age that the newspaper business was his calling, and he claimed that his working experience in Port Hope was one of the richest of his life.

In 1884, Norman and his older brother, Alexander Jr., left Port Hope and settled in Merrill, Wisc., where they leased the weekly Lincoln County Advocate. In 1887, the Black brothers launched their own weekly newspaper, the Merrill Times. Norman moved to Marinette, Wis., in 1889, where he was hired by Luther B. Noyes to work for the Marinette Eagle. The Noyes family was prominent in the Wisconsin newspaper business since Walter Noyes, Luther’s cousin, published the Baraboo Bulletin.

Norman was soon joined by Alexander Jr., and they bought the Marinette Star, which then merged with the Eagle to become the Marinette Star-Eagle. Largely because of his work at the newspaper, Norman became involved in Republican politics and was elected city treasurer and appointed secretary for the local Republican Party. When he was appointed director of the Factory Inspection Department in 1898, he and his wife moved to Milwaukee. His job focused mainly on safety and working conditions within the growing number of factories in Wisconsin.

In 1900, Robert LaFollette, a progressive Republican, was elected governor and replaced Norman with his own appointee.

After working at a number of odd jobs, Norman was hired as a salesman for the Minneapolis Paper Company and given the territory that included North Dakota. He needed to relocate to a city within his sales territory, and he may have received guidance from Walter Noyes, whose former editor, Henry Hansbrough, had been a newspaper publisher in Grand Forks and whose brother, Arthur Noyes, had been a successful attorney in Grand Forks,

Shortly after moving to Grand Forks in 1905, Norman observed the rivalry that existed between the two daily newspapers, The Grand Forks Herald and the Grand Forks Evening Press and Daily Plaindealer. The editor of the Herald was George Winship, a progressive Republican, and the editorial staff of the Plaindealer was more conservative. Eager to get back into the newspaper business, Norman found employment as manager of the Plaindealer.

Norman was lured away by Jeremiah D. Bacon, a conservative politician and hotel owner who was planning to establish a new newspaper, the Grand Forks Evening Times. The Times was the brainchild of Henry Hansbrough, a conservative U.S. Senator who believed he needed a counterbalance in Grand Forks to refute much of the political ideology printed in the more liberal Herald.

Both Hansbrough and Bacon were aware of Norman’s publishing experience, conservative political ideology, intelligence and work ethic, and they persuaded him to serve as the paper’s general manager. On Jan. 1, 1906, the first issue of the Times was released, and within a short period of time, it was a serious rival to the Herald. From 1909 to 1911, the Times was elected as both the official newspaper of Grand Forks County and the city of Grand Forks.

In 1911, Winship retired as editor/publisher of the Herald, and Bacon became the leading financial backer in the purchase of Winship’s newspaper. For the next three years, Bacon’s Times Company published the Herald as the morning newspaper and the Times as the evening paper. Active management fell to Norman B. Black as general manager and William Preston Davies and Holger Doran ‘Happy’ Paulson as the editorial and news department leaders of both newspapers. In 1914, the two newspapers were combined, and under Norman’s guidance, the Herald became “the largest paper in the state.”

Norman long had his eye on Fargo as the ideal place to own a newspaper, and he was specifically interested in The Forum. In 1916, he resigned from the Herald and moved to Fargo in pursuit of owning the newspaper of his dreams.

We will continue the story of Norman B. Black next week.