times picayune

In May 2013, New Orleans businessman John Georges bought Baton Rouge’s beloved family-owned newspaper The Advocate. At a time when media companies around the country have been down-sizing, shutting up shop, or going exclusively digital, the Baton Rouge Advocate has expanded into Acadiana and into New Orleans, ultimately vanquishing its rival there with the acquisition of the New Orleans Times Picayune. And the newspaper expansion has continued - now encompassing statewide more community papers than you can count on two hands, including New Orleans’ alternative weekly, Gambit.

We've known for some time that John Georges is one of the smartest business people in Louisiana. What we didn’t know, until his foray into newspapers, is that he is apparently one of the smartest business people in the USA. With over 8,000 journalists laid off nationwide over 2018-19, no-less than the President of the US repeatedly assailing the press and journalists as "the enemy of the people," and media pundits referring to this era as “Mediapocalypse,” it is instructive for the country and for lovers of a free and fair press to understand what exactly is the John Georges business model that allows him to keep growing The Advocate.

The person tasked with executing the Georges doctrine is Judi Terzotis, Publisher at The Advocate.

Judi is a veteran media executive, who grew up in Tennessee and spent 25 years of her career at Gannett—where she spent four years as president of Gannett Louisiana and two years as president of its Gulf Region, which includes five papers in Louisiana, two in Mississippi and one in Alabama.

Judi joined The Advocate parent company, Georges Media Group, in January 2018. Since then, Judi has grown the staff and circulation of The Acadiana Advocate, and played a key role in combining The New Orleans Advocate, The Times Picayune and its popular online platform NOLA.com, after the New Orleans acquisitions in 2019.

Host of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge, Stephanie Riegel, is a veteran journalist herself, having worked in TV and print for over two decades and currently serving as editor of the Baton Rouge Business Report.  This one-on-one conversation over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard is a rare and valuable opportunity to understand the current state of both local and national media organizations and especially the future of news delivery.

You can check out other conversations over lunch about local media here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

OK, so here's the thing about nut milk. Apparently Louisiana dairy producers are ticked off and powerful enough to get the legislature to outlaw anyone calling or labeling anything as "milk" that doesn't come from a cow. No bull. That's going to be the law. And that's according to one of the State's most connected journalists, Stephanie Grace.

Stephanie Grace was a columnist for the Times Picayune before quitting and moving to The Advocate, only to end up at The Advocate again now that they have bought the Times Picayune and become a brand name with a "|" in it - a vertical line that's been hiding on your keyboard for years and is under-utliized in daily parlance, for good reason. Nonetheless, Stephanie gets paid for calling bullsh!t on Louisiana politicians, a job with enormous security. OK, the paper is officially called The Times Picayune | New Orleans Advocate. 

Talking of long life, Paul Tuennerman says an insurance actuarial guy told him he's going to live till he's 92. Paul totally believes this and lives his life accordingly, wantonly eating hotdogs and creating dishes like charbroiled sh!tty sticky buns with high-end ice cream, which you're going to be able to order at a Dat Dog near you. Paul is actually the CEO of Dat Dog and he does sh!t like dream up stoner desserts for a living.

Hey! Meet The Bummers! Sean Doyle and Ben Shooter are the guitar playing vocalist 50% of the alt/pop/rock band that sounds kind of like Lennon & McCartney if they had dropped acid in Mid City instead of India. Sweet harmonies wrap around bizarre and whimsical lyrics about subjects ranging from lawyer Morris Bart to the fate of being trapped in The Fountainbeu building on the corner of Tulane and Carrolton. You're going to love this discovery.

Find photos from this show recorded at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur, here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.