Collection: FND005 - SHSND Foundation - Newspaper Hall of Fame
Series:
Tribute
Folder:
DIG
Item:
00037
Title:
William Marcil
Date:
2005
Creator:
Inscription/Marks:
Summary:
William C. (Bill) Marcil, president and chief executive officer of Forum Communications Co. and publisher of The Forum, is the 50th person inducted into the North Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Marcil, whose father was a grain buyer, was born in Rolette, attended elementary school in Garrison and graduated from high school in Sherwood. He is a 1958 graduate of the University of North Dakota.
He served in the U.S. Army and became a manager for Community Credit Co. in Robbinsdale, Minn. It was at that time that he met Jane Black of Fargo, who he married in 1960.
Jane Black's father, Norman D. Black Jr., was the publisher of The Forum and he offered Marcil a job as a salesman in The Forum's retail advertising department. After 18 months in the ad department, Marcil was named manager of the classified ad department and later worked his way up to the position of production manager, promotion manager and eventually to the post of assistant to the publisher. When Norman D. Black Jr. died in 1969, Marcil became The Forum's president and publisher.
Norman B. Black became the owner of The Forum in 1917. In 1933, he and Goerge Winship were the first inductees of the North Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame.
His son, Norman D. Black, became publisher of The Forum following his father's death in 1931, and continued in the post until his death in 1944. He was succeeded by the third Norman Black, Norman D. Black Jr., who published the newspaper until his death in 1969.
Norman D. Black Jr. was inducted into the N.D. Newspaper Hall of Fame in 1986. Marcil has been active in many professional newspaper organizations, and in 1983 became the first North Dakotan elected Chairman of American Newpaper Publishers Association (ANPA), now known as Newspaper Association of America (NAA). Marcil succeed Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, as the chairman of ANPA.
He followed that position as chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and later as chairman of the Greater North Dakota Chamber of Commerce. He was instrumental in the formation of the North Dakota Vision 2000 Committee in the late 1980s, and served as its chairman.
He is past president of the North Dakota Chapter of Sigma Delta Chi and Fargo Chamber of Commerce, and has been a director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association, the Northern Lights Council of the Boy Scouts of America, United Way of Fargo-Moorhead, and the Minnesota State University-Moorhead Development Foundation. Marcil served on the NDNA Education Foundation Board of Directors from 1981 to 1987 and was the foundation's vice president for six of those years.
Marcil received the alumni achievement award from UND in 1990; the Ralph D. Casey University of Minnesota Award for Distinguished Service in Journalism in 1993; an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from North Dakota State University in 1993; and the Schafer Excellence in Enterprise Award from the University of Mary, Bismarck, in 2003.
Under Marcil's leadership, Forum Communications Co. has grown to include daily newspapers in Fargo, Grand Forks, Dickinson and Jamestown in North Dakota; Bemidji, Willmar, Worthington, Red Wing and Duluth in Minnesota; and Mitchell, S.D. The company owns 30 community newspapers in North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, a Fargo radio station, television stations in Fargo, Bismarck, Minot and Grand Forks, and commercial printing plants in Detroit Lakes, Wdena and Worthington, Minn., and Fargo and West Fargo, N.D.
Red ID: FND_I_77477 Image ID: 509296 Image Notes: 10950 00005 00037
