In 2016, Forum Communications Company’s WDAY-TV won the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for their television documentary “Trafficked.” The media group started off 2017 with another big win: Matt Gade, of the Mitchell (South Dakota) Daily Republic was recognized as the Pictures of the Year International’s Sports Photographer of the Year. And those are only a few of the honors the employees of Forum Communications have received in recent years.
A family business, Forum Communications was started in 1878, with The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. In 1917, N.B. Black bought The Forum, and the company has remained a family business for the past hundred years; current publisher Bill Marcil, Jr., is the great-great grandson of the founder.
Since its founding, Forum Communications Company has grown significantly. With media properties in North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, Forum Communications has a wide reach through the Midwest. The company comprises 85 print publications — including 30 newspapers — several television and radio stations, as well as digital and video services, and a commercial printing division, and employs more than 1,700 people, including a number of reporters, editors and photographers.
And now Forum Communications has joined the News Media Alliance, bringing along hundreds of new journalists, business experts and production professionals, as well as their decades of media experience, all of which is sure benefit fellow Alliance members.
“Over the last two years, the News Media Alliance has rebuilt itself from the ground up, and it is thrilling when great news organizations like Forum Communications rejoin and show support for our optimistic vision of the future of the industry,” says Alliance CEO David Chavern.
“Some of my fondest memories as a young boy were when my father was chairman of American Newspaper Publisher Association,” Marcil shares. “The Alliance has been in our company’s DNA for years, and we are looking forward to renewing our partnership.”
Among the publications joining the Alliance are the award-winning Detroit Lakes Newspapers, which is made up of three Detroit-area weeklies known for their impressive local coverage; the Iowa-Minnesota Globe newspaper, which has won numerous national awards, including recognition from the Associated Press and the Echo Press, which has been recognized by the Minnesota Newspaper Association for its top-notch investigative reporting in Douglas County, Minnesota, among other exceptional local papers that cover neighborhoods across the Midwest.
Jennifer Peters is former content manager of the News Media Alliance.
