29-03-2025
EDITORIAL: What has changed, and what hasn't, in 100 years
Mar. 29—On Jan. 30, a handful of Post Bulletin employees attended the Minnesota Newspaper Association awards banquet in Brooklyn Park. This event recognizes the efforts of newspaper reporters, sports writers, editors, photographers, graphic artists and advertising designers across the state.
The PB claimed 16 first-place awards that night, as well as 15 second-places and 10 thirds across a wide array of categories. Each award carried a point value, and when the final numbers were tallied, the Post Bulletin claimed the 2024 Vance Trophy, awarded annually to the state's best multi-day newspaper.
It was a fun Thursday evening for the PB staffers who claimed the hardware, but they had little opportunity to bask in glory or rest on laurels. On Friday morning they were back in the office or out and about in southeastern Minnesota, working hard to produce new content for the Post Bulletin.
That's the nature of the newspaper business. There's little time for reflection or celebration. When one story has been told, another requires attention. One news cycle immediately follows (and indeed overlaps with) another, and each new day comes with a unique set of opportunities and challenges.
Journalists know all too well the truth of the saying, "You can't step into the same river twice." This weekend, the Post Bulletin commemorates 100 years of stepping into new waters every day.
On March 30, 1925, the first edition of the Rochester Post Bulletin landed on newsstands and doorsteps. It represented a merger of two competing papers, the Rochester Daily Bulletin and the Rochester Post and Record.
The front page of that first edition featured more than a dozen headlines, but no photos. Datelines included Berlin, San Francisco, Manilla, Chicago, Tulsa, Washington and Long Beach, Calif. — where the headline declared, "Man reports lost leg to California police." (It was an artificial leg, soon recovered.)
In 1925, and for decades to follow, the Post Bulletin was the region's best source for national and international news. Television news programs didn't reach wide audiences until the 1950s, and even then a half-hour broadcast couldn't touch the breadth of information to be found in a daily newspaper.
The Great Depression. Pearl Harbor. Hiroshima. Korea. Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. JFK. The moon landing. Vietnam. The first Super Bowl. Watergate. The Berlin Wall. The Gulf War. For all of these eras, events and celebrities, and others too numerous to name, the Post Bulletin was an invaluable source of news and analysis.
But the Post Bulletin also offered much more.
From the newspaper's inception, its reporters attended meetings of city and county leaders, chronicled the rise and fall of local business tycoons and enterprises, and bore witness to the inevitable growing pains of an expanding city. The Post Bulletin told the ever-evolving story of Mayo Clinic's ascension to international fame — and the newspaper experienced firsthand the devastation when floodwaters swept through downtown Rochester.
But nowhere was the Post Bulletin more valuable than in its documention of daily life in Rochester and southeast Minnesota. The newspaper was the official record of local marriages, births, deaths — and everything in between. Graduations. Anniversaries. Retirements. Military honors. Athletic achievements. For generations of our readers, life events weren't "real" until they were documented in the Post Bulletin's printed pages.
Times have changed.
During the past 30 years, the advent of the Internet, the smartphone and 24-hour cable news dramatically altered the ways in which people get their news. Print journalism paid a heavy price for this shift. Since 2005, more than 3,200 newspapers nationwide have closed or been absorbed by other publications.
The Post Bulletin was not immune to these pressures, and the resulting changes have not been easy. Jobs were eliminated. The company's physical footprint shrank. Six printed editions per week became just two, and those print editions aren't as thick as they were 30 years ago. Such developments led more than a few naysayers to predict the imminent demise of the Post Bulletin.
We proved the naysayers wrong, and what didn't kill us has made us stronger.
The Post Bulletin isn't just surviving — it's thriving. As we begin our second century in Rochester, we can report that during the past two years, our circulation has actually grown — due in large part to the public's growing awareness that our product is worth paying for, even for readers who never touch a physical newspaper. Our website gets more than 2 million views per month, and last year, our reporters produced more than 4,000 local news stories.
This growth isn't an accident. The Post Bulletin didn't resist change: It embraced it. Our team has never been more agile, adaptable and better positioned to identify and meet the needs of its readers than it is right now. Every day we get real-time data about which stories are bringing people to our website, and which advertisements are getting "clicks." Readers can contact us instantly, whether in an emailed letter to the editor or simply an online comment. When a story is best told through a video or a series of photographs, that's what we do. Our journalists are agile multitaskers, ready and willing to use whatever medium is appropriate, and our level of dedication to local news has never been higher.
Does this mean the future will be smooth sailing? Not at all.
Nationally, the level of distrust in the media is at an all-time high, and the Post Bulletin isn't immune to such cynicism. The constitutional guarantee of press freedom is under attack, and as respect for our profession has waned, so too have legal protections for journalists. Social media platforms routinely republish our content without our permission and without payment. Artificial intelligence is making it increasingly difficult for reporters and readers alike to distinguish between fact and fiction.
As the Post Bulletin begins its second century serving Rochester and southeast Minnesota, it will not ignore these new challenges — but it won't fear them, either. It will speak the truth to power. It will celebrate courage. It will give a voice to the weak.
That first edition of the Rochester Post Bulletin included a statement of goals for the new enterprise, including this phrase: "The policy of the Rochester Post-Bulletin will be to serve the public. ... to interpret through its news columns Olmsted County and southern Minnesota's developments without bias and without prejudice."
That policy hasn't changed in 100 years, and it won't change in the next 100, either.
