_front_page.jpg) The April 4, 2007, front page of The Advocate | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Georges Media |
| Publisher | Judi Terzotis |
| Editor | Rene Sanchez |
| Founded | 1925 (with heritage dating to 1842) |
| Headquarters | 10705 Rieger Road Baton Rouge, Louisiana |
| Circulation | 36,685 Daily 42,064 Sunday[1] |
| Website | theadvocate |
The Advocate isLouisiana's largest daily newspaper. Based inBaton Rouge, it serves the southern portion of the state. Separate editions forNew Orleans,The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, forShreveport and Bossier City,The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate, and forAcadiana,The Acadiana Advocate, are published. It also publishesgambit, about New Orleans food, culture, events, and news, and weekly entertainment magazines:Red in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, andBeaucoup in New Orleans.
The oldest ancestor of the modern paper was theDemocratic Advocate, an anti-Whig, pro-Democratperiodical established in 1842.[2][3]
Another newspaper, theLouisiana Capitolian, was established in 1868 and soon merged with the then-namedWeekly Advocate. By 1889 the paper was being published daily. In 1904, a new owner, William Hamilton, renamed itThe Baton Rouge Times and laterThe State-Times, a paper with emphasis on local news.[2]
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 publishingThe Morning Advocate to focus on national news. The Manship family[4][5] went on to become an influential force in Baton Rouge, later adding radio stationWJBO in 1932 (moving it to Baton Rouge in 1934) and television stationWBRZ-TV in 1955.[4][6]
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 operateThe Advocate until 2013.
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[7] 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.[8][9]
In March 2013, New Orleans businessmanJohn Georges signed a letter of intent to purchaseThe Advocate.[10] Georges and his wife Dathel bought the newspaper through a holding company, Georges Media, on April 30, 2013.[11] 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.[citation needed][needs update]
The Advocate relaunched its New Orleans edition August 18, 2013, asThe New Orleans Advocate and later addedThe Acadiana Advocate, a third edition serving Lafayette and theAcadiana region.[12]
On April 9, 2018, the holding company forThe New Orleans Advocate purchased the New Orleans weeklyGambit and bestofneworleans.com.[13][14]
In 2019,The Advocate won its firstPulitzer Prize, in theLocal Reporting category, "For a damning portrayal of the state’s discriminatory conviction system, including a Jim Crow-era law, that enabled Louisiana courts to send defendants to jail without jury consensus on the accused’s guilt."[15]The Advocate's reporting highlighted how the state's non-unanimous jury law—one of only two in the country, with the other being inOregon[16]—contributed to racial disparities in incarceration and sentencing.[17] Due in part to a voter-education campaign based onThe Advocate's reporting, Louisiana voters approved an amendment to the state constitution requiring unanimous jury verdicts on November 6, 2018.[18][19][20]
In May 2019,The Advocate announced that the Georges had purchased its New Orleans competitor,The Times-Picayune, and planned to merge the two papers and their websites into a new newspaper in June 2019.[21][22] LikeThe Advocate, the combined newspaper will publish a print edition seven days a week.[21][22]The Advocate's Baton Rouge and Lafayette editions were unaffected. The merged paper, carrying the nameplates of bothThe Times-Picayune andThe New Orleans Advocate, began publication on July 1.[23]
