The Minnesota Newspaper Association Half Century Club commemorates those who've worked in the industry for 50 or more years. Last year, Bruce Fenske of New Ulm joined the club.
Fenske started his newspaper career as a youth, starting as a carrier part-time and working while in high school. After college, he worked as a reporter and in advertising before spending 35 years as a publisher.
His entire journalism career was spent at his hometown newspaper — the New Ulm Journal. When he retired from the newspaper in October 2015, he said in an interview, "I never expected to come back to New Ulm. I had a degree in business administration [from the University of Minnesota], and had interviewed with a couple of insurance companies."
But two months before his college graduation, Fenske was offered a job by his hometown paper. Fenske, whose mother, Betty, had worked at the Journal as a news editor, accepted the offer and spent the next 42 years at the newspaper.
Fenske died at his home in New Ulm on April 7. He would have turned 66 on April 22.
His first full-time job for the Journal was reporting and selling ads for the paper's agribusiness section. After a year of that, he moved to the advertising department. In 1977, he was promoted to advertising director. In 1980, at age 29, he became the publisher.
During his time at the paper, he served on the Minnesota Newspaper Association's board of directors for nine years and served as the group's president in 2006.
Lisa Hills of the Minnesota Newspaper Association remembers the depth of his commitment:
