The Post marks 50 years of Johnson ownership, service

FILE PHOTO

Charlotte Post publisher Bill Johnson (left) talks with U.S. Rep. and future North Carolina Gov. Jim Martin at the newspaper’s office in the mid-1970s. Bill Johnson bought The Post in 1974, and his sons Gerald and Bob have grown the company into a multimedia platform today.

The Charlotte Post Publishing Company is celebrating a half-century of Johnson family ownership.

Since Bill Johnson bought The Post in 1974, Black Charlotte’s oldest media outlet has covered the growth, hope and aspirations of our community through transitions large and small. The Post of Bill Johnson’s day covered the Black community with a physical newspaper and black and white photography. Today’s Post – co-published by Bill’s sons Gerald and Bob – is a media company with newspapers in North Carolina’s two largest markets as well as websites, social media presence, and audio and video platforms.

To mark the occasion, we’re doubling down on our commitment to community journalism that informs and empowers. The Post and The Triangle Tribune, which covers the Raleigh and Durham markets, will convene gatherings as part of our Focus on Black Charlotte initiative that highlights the last 50 years by bringing together current and former staff members as well as readers to offer feedback that will help us understand how to do a better job of covering our community.  

In addition to in-person gatherings, The Post and The Tribune will tell the company’s story – past, present and future – online and in digital formats such as podcasts and video. During a time of great upheaval for U.S. media, we’re determined to share why Black-owned publications are needed more than ever to serve communities that until recently were all but ignored by so-called mainstream media. We’re not here to copy anyone – The Post is independent and free of the ties that have left corporate-owned publishers with declining audiences and staffing cutbacks. Our constituency is local, and we prefer it that way.

The Post’s focus has always been on issues, people and events of importance to Black people, and that won’t change. What we’re doing in 2024 is telling our story in a way that’s never been done before: how The Post has kept pace with innovation since newsrooms were digitized in the 1980s; journalistic diversity in terms of the people who’ve worked here and The Triangle Tribune, and what the future entails for the company. That includes new initiatives in 2024 to reflect the times we live in. We’ll do more outreach to younger people to shed light on their concerns and successful endeavors – which is something The Post has long prided itself on.

Of course, The Post’s history extends beyond the last 50 years and we’ll share those stories as well. Among the luminaries we’ll highlight include early 20th century publishers like AME Zion Bishop George Wylie Clinton, publisher of The Star of Zion and leader of an initiative to establish Charlotte’s first secular newspaper, Henry Houston and Nathaniel Tross.

Journalists like Trezzvant Anderson, best known for his reporting on Black workers’ advocacy for higher wages and benefits and civil rights in the 1940s and ‘50s, and Jalyne Strong, who pushed for more investigative reporting on hate groups and local law enforcement in the late 1980s, were integral to The Post’s growth.

And one of the photographers to ever work at a Charlotte newspaper was The Post’s James Peeler, whose images graced Black publications across the nation for three decades.

The Post has always punched above its weight journalistically. We’ve developed reporters who’ve gone on to some of the nation’s largest publications, such as The Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune, and one of our alumni, John H. White, went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for photography with the Chicago Sun-Times.

We’re also interested in your impressions of The Post. If you have a story to share about our reporting or appearing as a Beauty of the Week, please do; if you have old copies – especially before 1974 – we’d be thrilled if you share them as well.  

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