PHOTO/PAUL WILLIAMS III

Charlotte Post co-publishers Gerald (left) and Bob Johnson have led the communications company through media expansion into new markets and technologies. Their father, Bill, bought The Post in 1974.

Gerald and Bob Johnson didn’t set out to become publishers of The Post.

That was their father, Bill Johnson’s calling.

As the first African-American to write for Charlotte’s daily newspapers, the elder Johnson loved journalism before he bought The Post in 1974. Bill’s sons were into other endeavors – Gerald was a bank executive; Bob an elementary school teacher.

“My father had experience working with previous publications, including the Queen City Gazette, which he started on his own,” Gerald Johnson said. “He worked in the newspaper business with the Charlotte Observer and Charlotte News and the community realized he could pretty much run this publication.”

Forty years later, the Johnsons are still publishing The Post, which has evolved into The Charlotte Post Publishing Company. It also owns The Triangle Tribune, a weekly publication in Durham, websites and plans events. Newsgathering, however, is the foundation, even as Charlotte has grown from 250,000 residents in the early ’70s to more than 800,000 today.

“Even though the city has changed and the dynamics of the city has changed as far as the population, but the one thing The Post did then and still doing is make sure we cover the things that interest our community,” Bob Johnson said.

Using a city-backed small business loan, Bill Johnson bought The Post from Garland Atkins, who acquired the newspaper from Nathaniel Tross, who published community newspapers across the region. The elder Johnson immediately sought ways to improve its coverage of the community.

During his time as publisher, The Post introduced Top Seniors, a program that highlights academic achievement in Mecklenburg County’s high schools, Beauty of the Week and Churchworker of the year. Top Seniors, which launched in 1975, highlighted its 40th – and largest – class in history this year with more than 300 students in a glossy publication.

In March 1986, Bill Johnson, who had been diagnosed with advanced leukemia, turned to Gerald, his youngest son and a vice president at NCNB (now Bank of America), with a proposal: Run the paper while the elder Johnson took a leave of duty. Bill never mentioned the severity of his illness.

“His story was the doctors told him he needed to step away for about three months and if I could come in for those three months and run the publication he would appreciate it,” Gerald said. “We argued over that for a couple of hours and finally I told him I would give it a shot.…He made it sound like he was coming back.”

Bill Johnson died three months later, but the successors had taken to the role thrust upon them.

As CEO, Gerald Johnson pushed The Post into the technological age, ditching antiquated labor-intensive machines for computers that sped newsgathering and publication design.
“Early on, we tried to get things in place from a technological standpoint,” Gerald Johnson said. “One of the first things we did when I came in was purchase computers to start the electronic age of the publication. We were using old layout schemes where we had to go in the back and lay stuff out and paste it on pasteboard with typographical machines.”

Bob Johnson wore several hats at The Post. During Bill Johnson’s tenure, he wrote a column, “What’s Happening,” that focused on social events as well as circulation. Today, as general manager, he’s in charge of growing circulation of The Post and The Tribune, which covers Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill.

More emphasis was put on delivering hard news of interest to African-Americans, from police-civilian conflicts to the dawn of the AIDS crisis and gentrification of formerly all-black inner city neighborhoods.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about content,” Gerald Johnson said. “The editorial department does a great job of gathering content, so how we deliver it is an entirely different ball game, whether it’s in print, iPhone, computer or whatever, the content stays the same but the delivery mechanism, we try to stay as state of the art as we can get.”

The greatest tech opportunity was the Internet, which allowed community publication companies like The Post to stretch their reach to larger audiences. Print readership of The Post and The Tribune have remained relatively stable while its digital family, including thecharlottepost.com and triangletribune.com websites have attracted new readers. The titles have also grown their following via social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, which when taken in total delivers content to more than 60,000 people weekly.

In a country that is becoming more ethnically diverse, black media, particularly newspapers, still serve a core function – reporting stories that are often overlooked by mainstream media.

"If It wasn’t for the black press we wouldn’t know about things like Trayvon Martin, like the Jena 6 in Louisiana,” National Association of Black Journalists President Bob Butler told WGBH-TV in Boston during the trade group’s convention in July. “We wouldn’t know about those things because the mainstream media didn’t care about those stories until they got enough traction, which was started with the black press.”

The media landscape is pocked with challenges from falling viewership and readership for legacy outlets to sparse advertising dollars. Community publications, especially those serving niche audiences, have been hard hit as well. But black publishers have reason for optimism. African American journalists who’ve been displaced from mainstream media are bringing fresh ideas to community publications. The economy is slowly showing signs of recovery. And people are still reading about events and individuals who impact their community.

“What’s popular overall and what people think is popular being reported doesn’t necessarily reflect the community we serve,” Gerald Johnson said. “We’ll always have a purpose if we stick to what we’re good at – providing the content that’s relative to our readers.”

Comments