The Advocate (Louisiana)

The Advocate is Louisiana's largest daily newspaper. Based in Baton Rouge, it serves the southern portion of the state, including Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette. It also publishes weekly entertainment magazines: Red in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, and Beaucoup in New Orleans.

History

The oldest ancestor of the modern paper was the Democratic Advocate, an anti-Whig, pro-Democrat periodical established in 1842.

Another newspaper, the Louisiana Capitolian, was established in 1868 and soon merged with the then-named Weekly Advocate. By 1889 the paper was being published daily. In 1904, a new owner, William Hamilton, renamed it The Baton Rouge Times and later The State-Times, a paper with emphasis on local news.^[1]

In 1909, The State-Times was acquired by Capital City Press, a company newly founded by Charles P. Manship Sr. and James Edmonds. Manship purchased his partner's interest in 1912. In 1925, he also began publishing The Morning Advocate to focus on national news. The Manship family^[2] went on to become an influential force in Baton Rouge, later adding radio station WJBO and television station WBRZ-TV.^[2]

The State-Times, an afternoon publication, ceased in October 1991. The Advocate remains the sole descendant of the original 1842 paper. The Manship family's Capital City Press company continued to own and operate The Advocate until 2013.

Handing out free copies of the New Orleans edition in the New Orleans Central Business District, October 2012

On October 1, 2012, under the Manships, The Advocate began printing and distributing a daily New Orleans edition. This was due to a perceived gap in the market^[3] that materialized when New Orleans' longtime daily paper, The Times-Picayune, announced it would cut back its print publication to only three days a week.^[4][5]

In March 2013, New Orleans businessman John Georges signed a letter of intent to purchase The Advocate.^[6] Georges and his wife Dathel bought the newspaper through a holding company, Georges Media, on April 30, 2013.^[7] The newspaper's circulation in 2013 was 98,000 (daily) and 125,000 (Sunday) as a result of its entry into and 20,000 subscriptions in the New Orleans market.

The Advocate relaunched its New Orleans edition August 18, 2013, as The New Orleans Advocate and later added The Acadiana Advocate, a third edition serving Lafayette and the Acadiana region.

Notable people

David William Thomas, a Louisiana State University journalism professor, published a small Baton Rouge newspaper in the early 1920s, which was acquired by The Advocate. He then published papers in Hammond, and Minden, where he was elected mayor in 1936.

From 1949 to her death in 1970, Margaret Dixon was The Advocate's first woman managing editor. Veteran journalist Kenneth L. Dixon (no relation to Margaret) also worked there.

Advocate main office in Baton Rouge, 2012

Ed Cullen's "Attic Salt" column was a feature in the paper. His book Letter in a Woodpile collected some of his Morning Advocate and NPR selections.

In 2007, the newspaper lost three of its key staff with the deaths of Capitol Bureau Chief John LaPlante, health reporter and author of "The Patient Person" columns Laurie Smith Anderson and environmental writer Michael P. Dunne. LaPlante died in Texas in a drowning accident, and Anderson and Dunne succumbed to cancer.

In 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Handelsman returned to Louisiana to join The Advocate as a cartoonist and animator, and columnist James Gill moved to The Advocate from the Times-Picayune.

References

External links

• Official website