Bill Salisbury, who in almost 50 years as a political reporter with the Pioneer Press covered 40 sessions of the Minnesota Legislature, eight governors as well as presidential visits and state and national political conventions and campaigns, died Monday at Lyngblomsten Care Center in St. Paul after a period of declining health. He was 80.

A self-described “newspaperman,” Salisbury noted that during his career “assignments took me to Bosnia, the White House, conventions in New York, San Francisco and other major U.S. cities, a presidential limousine ride with Bill Clinton, factories and farms, prisons and jails, parks and sewers. I got to ask tough questions of high-ranking politicians and tell extraordinary stories of ordinary Minnesotans.”Armed with an affable nature, an objective approach — he called himself a “political agnostic” — and quick mind, he worked the House and Senate chambers at the Minnesota Capitol as well as the halls where lobbyists and staff passed bits of news and rumor, as he made sense of policy and politics affecting the daily lives of readers.

Gov. Tim Walz said Salisbury first interviewed him in 2005 when he ran for his first term in Congress. In an interview Tuesday with the Pioneer Press, he praised Salisbury’s deep knowledge of state government and even-handed approach to reporting.

“If it wasn’t flattering to you, it was still going to be true, and you knew you were going to get a fair shake,” Walz said. “He just understood the process so well, which was really good for the readers, because you knew he was going to ask the questions that really matter.”

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar offered similar praise in a statement where she called his byline “synonymous with accuracy and integrity.”

“Through his reporting on local, state, and federal leaders, he showed people how their government touched their lives,” Klobuchar said. “By making the public more informed, Bill made our democracy stronger. Anytime I sat for an interview with him, I always trusted that his story would be fair and informative. I respected him greatly and will miss him.”

Former Gov. Arne Carlson noted that Salisbury earned the trust of politicians on both sides of the aisle.

“Bill was just extraordinarily kind,” Carlson said. “You don’t think that kind of a person can be a good reporter, but the truth of the matter is, his kindness led to a tremendous amount of trust, and trust is what begets information — not fear. He was a very trustworthy person. Everybody liked him. Everybody would agree that he was extraordinarily kind and gracious, but yet he was a solid professional. He got the story.”

“I don’t think anybody could find any example of where Bill Salisbury betrayed a trust or in any way treated anybody rudely or in a poor manner,” said Carlson, who was elected governor of Minnesota in 1991 and served two terms.

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who was in office from 2003 to 2011 and served in the state House before that, called Salisbury “an ‘old-school’ journalist in the best sense of the term. He was a consummate professional dedicated to the mastery of his craft and the highest ethical standards including accuracy and fairness. He was also a very decent and wonderful person. I respected him greatly.”

Mike Burbach, editor of the Pioneer Press, said Salisbury was a gentleman who drew upon a broad range of sources in Minnesota politics.

“He had people he was friendly with all around the spectrum, because he was a guy who was committed to the ideals of the craft. He believed in fairness. He believed in the value of varied perspectives, and he acted that way.”

Former Pioneer Press Editor Walker Lundy said “no one defined the Pioneer Press better than Bill.”

Upon his retirement in 2015, Salisbury said some of his more memorable stories included former Vice President Walter Mondale announcing Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984 at the Minnesota Capitol, the first time a woman was part of a national ticket. He also mentioned passage of the gay marriage bill in 2013.

And, there was the death of U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone in a plane crash in 2002. Salisbury had known Wellstone since the college professor first ran for state auditor in the early 1980s.

“That was maybe the best campaign I covered and it was definitely the worst campaign I covered,” Salisbury recalled.

‘Tough but fair, hard charging but respectful’

Salisbury was “infinitely fair” and didn’t believe in “gotcha” journalism, said longtime friend and colleague Steven Thomma, who now serves as the executive director of the White House Correspondents’ Association and lives in Fairfax, Va.

“I knew him for nearly 40 years, and to this day, I have no idea who he voted for ever in an election. No idea,” Thomma said. “We didn’t talk about that stuff, and it didn’t show in his journalism.”

Thomma and Salisbury worked together at the state Capitol in the 1980s and in Washington, D.C. Salisbury ended every interview with a politician with the same question, Thomma said.

“He’d ask whoever he was interviewing — the governor, usually, ‘Is there anything you want to add or emphasize?’” Thomma said. “I remember that quote. I’m not sure it would make it into his story, but he gave them the chance of feeling that it was a conversation as much as it was anything else. It certainly wasn’t a gotcha interview. Not from Bill Salisbury.”

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger, who worked with Salisbury at the state Capitol for the Pioneer Press from 2001 to 2009 and from 2015 to 2017, said he drew respect from colleagues.

“Bill was a consummate Capitol reporter, showing generations of journalists under the domed building how to be tough but fair, hard charging but respectful in our interactions,” said Stassen-Berger, who is now the executive editor of the Des Moines Register. “In recent days, colleagues who worked with him and competed with him visited Bill to show their respect and admiration. Working beside him in the Capitol basement helped make me the journalist I am.”

Longtime Star Tribune politics writer Lori Sturdevant, who met Salisbury in 1978 while she wrote for the then-Minneapolis Tribune, said “for the last 20 years of Bill’s time there, he was the dean of the Capitol press corps. We all looked up to and respected him and gave some deference to him.”

Ethics mattered to Salisbury. He would tell a story of declining the offer of an ice cream cone from then- President Barack Obama during a visit in St. Paul on the grounds that he couldn’t take gifts of any sort from politicians.

The Belgrade Tribune

Salisbury was born in Belgrade, Minn., on June 22, 1945. His father, the late E.R. Salisbury, was the editor and publisher of the weekly Belgrade Tribune. His mother, the late Marie Salisbury, was a homemaker and community activist who proofread his father’s newspaper and called every home in town weekly to ask: “Do you have any news for the Tribune?”

He liked to say he launched his newspaper career as a preschooler with a “typo.”

“Somehow I got behind my dad’s newspaper printing press, pulled the letter “B” from Tribune at the top of the front page and put it back in upside down. That week subscribers received the ‘Belgrade Triqune.’ My dad found it amusing but made sure it never happened again.”

Upon graduating from Belgrade High School in 1963, Salisbury attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., for one year, transferred to the University of Minnesota journalism school, and then dropped out of school and landed a job as a copy boy at U.S. News & World Report magazine in Washington, D.C. Soon after, his draft board threatened to revoke his student deferment, so he enrolled at the University of Minnesota-Morris, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1969.

While attending school in Morris he met Janet Holt, the love of his life. They were married in Alexandria, Minn., in 1968. Janet died in 2016. The couple had one daughter, Rachael, who was born in 1969 and became a talented musician. She died in 2020.

Reporting career

Salisbury got his first daily newspaper reporting job at the Fairmont, Minn., Sentinel in 1971. He moved to the Rochester Post Bulletin in 1972. The Pioneer Press hired him as a general assignment reporter in 1977 and he was assigned to their Capitol bureau the following year.

He served as the paper’s Washington, D.C., correspondent from 1994 through 1999, before returning to the Minnesota Capitol. Salisbury retired from that beat in 2015 but continued to cover politics and government part time.

Nearly a decade after his retirement, Salisbury kept a desk at the Pioneer Press Capitol bureau. It remains filled with materials and notes from stories he had worked on years after he stepped away from full-time work.

He is survived by a sister, Wilma Salisbury of Euclid, Ohio, and son-in-law Pierre Dimba of Shoreview.

Salisbury continued reporting part time after retirement “because I enjoyed meeting people and learning new things,” he said. Journalism provided him with a “sense of purpose.”

“But most meaningful to me, I got to meet and occasionally befriend a lot of smart, good-hearted folks who brought much joy to my life,” Salisbury said.