Bill Huntzicker

Bill Huntzicker, a Minneapolis writer, calls himself a “cowboy dropout,” having grown up on Montana ranches and started a journalism career at the Miles City Star. Failing as a cowboy, he moved “back east” to the big city of Minneapolis, where he worked for the Associated Press before going to graduate school to earn a doctorate in American studies at the University of Minnesota.

Huntzicker enjoys history, especially of Montana, Minnesota and the mass media. He drove and narrated historical tours for the Minneapolis RiverCity Trolley for five seasons before the program ended in 2006. He is the author of The Popular Press 1833-1865 (Greenwood Press, 1999) and numerous academic articles on 19th century journalism and the frontier press. He taught journalism and mass media courses for 30 years at area colleges, including University of Wisconsin-River Falls, St. Cloud State University, and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He has updated his chapter on the frontier press for eight editions of The Media in America: A History from 1990 through 2011 (Vision Press, 2011).