FARGO — A local TV news icon turned champion of all things tourism in Fargo-Moorhead is calling it a career.

Charley Johnson, 75, president and CEO of Visit Fargo-Moorhead, formerly known as the Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau, retires this month.

His last day will be Friday, Sept. 19, allowing two weeks of overlap on the job with his successor, Shirley Hughes, recently named to the position.

Johnson’s 13 years of promoting travel and tourism came on the heels of a near 40-year-career in broadcast news.

“It was the best thing that could have happened to me. It was a great late-life career change, which I never really expected,” he said.

Mallari Ackerman, director of convention sales at Visit Fargo-Moorhead, was hired a few months before Johnson.

She remembers being “st

See Full Page