Historic Louisiana

THE ADVOCATE
✧
Above: A 1941 photo portrait of Charles P.
Manship Sr., founder of Capital City Press.
Below: This handsome brick building was
the home of the State-Times newspaper in
1909 when Charles P. Manship Sr. entered
the newspaper field. The building was at
the corner of Lafayette and Florida streets.
The style of architecture resembles buildings
constructed before the Civil War.
HISTORIC LOUISIANA
118
For Baton Rouge residents, reading The
Advocate is as regular a morning custom
as sipping a cup of rich Louisiana coffee.
The journalistic excellence found in this
family-owned newspaper is also a longstanding
tradition.
“It is our intention to print a newspaper
whose editorials are not for sale, and whose
news items cannot be suppressed, a newspaper
commensurate with the hopes and plans of
Baton Rouge...” wrote Charles P. Manship in his
first 1909 editorial as manager of the Baton
Rouge paper in which he had just invested.
Since that time the Manship family has lived up
to his promise, and to his additional pledge to
support no political party, but only those
candidates and issues which a consensus of the
editors feel are worthwhile for Baton Rouge.
With a circulation today of 93,360 daily and
124,848 Sunday, The Advocate is a major
presence in Louisiana media markets, and its
coverage of the state–including Louisiana’s
always interesting politics—has garnered the
paper and its journalists numerous awards. The
Advocate is still very much a family enterprise in
Louisiana’s capital city with Douglas Manship,
Jr., grandson of the founder, being named
publisher in 1999.
The history of Baton Rouge’s newspapers is a
turbulent one, dating back to a journal
published in both French and English in the
early nineteenth century. When the state capital
located there in the 1840s, Baton Rouge was
already accustomed to partisan politics in the
local press and flamboyant editors at the
helm—one unfortunate such journalist being
fatally shot in a duel. It was in those heady days
in 1842 that an ancestor of today’s newspaper
began publication as the Democratic Advocate
(with the agenda of defeating all candidates of
the rival Whig party).
During the remaining ninteenth century the
Baton Rouge newspaper scene was an exciting
one—even when two editors left town to join
the Confederate Army in the Civil War. The
Capitolian came on the scene in 1868 with the
flamboyant Leon Jastremski at the helm (alone,
after his partner succumbed to a well-aimed
shot by an irate reader.) This paper soon
merged with The Weekly Advocate. By 1889 the
Weekly was being published daily, except
Mondays. In 1904 a new owner, William
Hamilton, renamed it The Baton Rouge Times.
The Daily State newspaper, founded in 1904,
bought The Times and the paper was again
renamed the State-Times. However, by 1909
this newspaper venture was floundering and
yet another Advocate had come into print.
At this point a new player joined the journalistic
game. Charles P. Manship and James
Edmonds created Capital City Press in 1909
and bought the State-Times, an afternoon paper.