Alumni in Focus: Sam Black
Graduated: 1997
Positions at the Daily: Editorial page editor, reporter, editorial page writer, online staffer

If you pickup a copy of The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, chances are you’ll see Sam Black’s byline all over the front page.

Sam Black is a veteran reporter at the newspaper that has earned a reputation for breaking local business news. Sam is one of the paper’s best and most aggressive reporters.

As a senior reporter for the newspaper that reaches about 50,000 readers on a weekly basis, Sam writes with authority about real estate and other beats. He is an award-winning reporter who prides himself on “building a valuable network of sources.”

After he left The Daily, Sam worked for his hometown newspaper, the Grand Forks Herald.

“I applied for a job that a job that didn’t really exist at a paper that was in shambles because its building was flooded by the Red River and the old newsroom had just burned down. I got a job, at first covering cops, because I had been an intern at the Herald the summer before and because Mike Jacobs, now publisher and editor of the Herald, needed warm bodies who could gather news in the town that was full of it,” he said.

Black was part of the staff when it won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for public service for the coverage of the flood.

While balancing a journalism career with family life can be a challenge, Sam finds the work very satisfying. “The people I work with and my sources make my job exciting every day. I can’t imagine being at a job where I’d be watching the clock, wishing it would move faster. Instead, I always want it to slow down!!!”

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