In 46 years in North Dakota newspapers, Herald’s Wayne Nelson made his mark with calmness, kindness

GRAND FORKS — Wayne Nelson spent most of his North Dakota newspaper career in sports, an area with a reputation for late-night chaos and deadline demands.

Nelson is retiring this month after 46 years in the industry, the last 28 at the Grand Forks Herald, and those who worked with and around him will remember how the frantic atmospheres and time-limit pressures never changed Nelson’s demeanor and approach.

“Press row can get intense with deadlines and big personalities and coaches not showing up or stats running late but Wayne never turned into a different person when that happened,” said Jayson Hajdu, who worked in the UND media relations department from 1995 to 2018. “He never took it out on you and made a show. That demeanor was even-keel. That was reflected in his coverage. He didn’t veer into sensational … always even-keel.”

Nelson, a fixture at UND’s Hyslop Sports Center, Memorial Stadium and later the Alerus Center and Betty Engelstad Sioux Center, is a five-time winner of the Sportswriter of the Year award (1986, 1988, 1998, 2001, 2009).

He’s a member of the North Dakota Associated Press Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame and the Grand Forks River Cities Speedway Hall of Fame. He also wrote news stories during the Herald’s coverage of the 1997 Red River flood, helping the paper win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Nelson started in newspapers in Valley City (1976-1980) and Jamestown (1980-1995) before joining the Herald in 1995.

Virg Foss was a sports reporter at the Herald for 36 years, from 1969 until retiring in 2005.

“Wayne brought a calmness to the situation, by his nature,” Foss said. “He was always under control, never in a visible panic mode. That calmness carried over to the staff working with him on those tight deadlines. I don’t know of anyone at the Herald who didn’t enjoy, and benefit from, working with Wayne.”

Pat Sweeney, also a member of the NDAPSSA Hall of Fame, was the sports director at WDAZ-TV in Grand Forks from 1983 to 2014.

“I always viewed Wayne as someone who does it the right way,” Sweeney said. “He’s always fair and accurate. It was never about him. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t like him and how many reporters can have that distinction? He was never a guy to get too worked up about anything. He was very level-headed and calm. That certainly helps at deadline time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a frantic mood. He was steady and calm.”

Nelson covered some of the biggest moments in local sports in the last 30 years.

He was in Florence, Ala., for UND football’s only NCAA Division II national championship in 2001. He was in Pine Bluff, Ark., during UND’s national championship stretch of women’s basketball in the late 1990s. He covered UND’s first NCAA Division I Tournament appearances in women’s and men’s basketball in College Station, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah. He covered Virgil Hill boxing fights, a Frozen Four in Milwaukee and Jerome Beasley’s NBA Draft selection.

“His versatility is incredible,” said Herald sports reporter Brad Schlossman, who has worked with Nelson for the last 20 years. “He can transition from writing about dirt track racing to college football to curling to prep soccer seamlessly. His institutional knowledge about this area and state is remarkable, too. It’s not just sports. He can tell you histories of families, businesses, politics and more. When you have so much knowledge on that many topics, not much can fall through the cracks.”

In 2009, Nelson was promoted from sports reporter to sports editor.

Herald Publisher Korrie Wenzel said he’ll always remember how Nelson not only managed the Herald’s award-winning sports department, but also the rapport and respect he developed with staff, sources and those he covered. Mostly, Wenzel said, it’s obvious Nelson truly has enjoyed working in sports.

“Wayne could have easily moved into news management or done most anything else he wanted to do in newspapering or in communications, but he stayed true to his heart,” Wenzel said. “He is dedicated to his craft, and the Herald and our readers have benefited from that dedication and expertise.”

Nelson was the Herald’s longest-tenured sports editor since C.D. Locklin, who started on the job upon returning home from World War I.

“You won’t find a manager who understands and cares about the human aspect of his employees more than Wayne,” Schlossman said. “When personal life and family things conflicted with work, the advice from Wayne was always the same: Take care of that, we’ll figure it out here. There’s a reason why virtually nobody in the sports department has left for other jobs during his 14 years as editor. Beyond being good at his job, he’s a great human being who really cares about people around him.”