Adras La Borde - Alexandria Daily Town Talk, His Only Paper

Alexandria Daily Town Talk, His Only Paper

LaBorde came to the Alexandria Daily Town Talk in 1945. The late George W. Shannon, the future editor of the since defunct Shreveport Journal, actually preceded him as a staffer at The Town Talk. LaBorde learned the business from the ground floor and in 1950 was named "managing editor", a position that he held for twenty-seven years. In 1977, he was designated "executive editor", a title that he held through his last year of full-time employment. Unlike many print journalists who move from one newspaper to another seeking upward mobility, LaBorde stayed with The Town Talk in a career that spanned parts of six decades.

His staff joked that he had no formal education but "the school of hard knocks". However, he did attend Tyler Commercial College in Tyler, Texas, which for a period of time claimed to be the largest business training school in the United States. The college offered instruction in bookkeeping, shorthand, telegraphy, business administration, and finance.

LaBorde demanded integrity, accuracy, originality, and speed from his reporters and editors. When his near legendary but quiet temper flared, he could, without a trace of humor, stare down the culprit over the rim of his glasses.

Despite his "old school" demeanor, LaBorde adjusted his newsroom to modern demands. He knew that the paper had to attract subscribers to stay afloat. Computers were introduced at the Town Talk in the summer of 1973 to improve efficiency and to increase the volume and quality of news stories. One of the former reporters, Elizabeth Roberts Martin of Norman, Oklahoma, a 1966 graduate of Louisiana State University, became the first woman to hold editing positions in the Town Talk newsroom. LaBorde hired The Town Talk's first black reporter, Cleo Joffrion, an Alexandria native. He named his assistant managing editor, Cecil Williams, a native of the Kentucky coal-mining area, as business editor, a position from which Williams won numerous awards.

He sent the young reporter Leonard Sanderson, Jr., to Baton Rouge to cover the legislature in 1974; he runs his own consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Another beginning reporter, Jeff Cowart, an Alexandria native and LSU graduate, became the first press secretary for then Governor Buddy Roemer in 1988. Cowart went on to establish his own management consulting firm, Media National, in Leesburg, Virginia.

Three Town Talk staffers, Larry Collins, Betty Luman, and Chet Hilburn, advanced to the Houston Chronicle. Jack Harp of Ruston came to the newspaper at the age of 22 in 1972 to work on the "wire desk." The technology changed so much over the following three decades that the term "wire desk" was replaced by "Metro desk." Rebecca Jo Tubb Mulkey (1949–1999), originally from Magnolia, Arkansas, wrote feature stories before moving on to the Torrance Daily Breeze in Torrance, California. All owed a part of their success to LaBorde's demanding tutelage.

LaBorde's tenure at the newspaper coincided with the management of publisher Joe D. Smith, Jr. (1922–2008), a native of Grant Parish, and Smith's first wife, Jane Wilson Smith, whose father had owned The Town Talk. The Smiths sold the paper to Central Newspapers, Inc., of Indianapolis, which later sold it to the Virginia-based Gannett. Smith is a former member of the Louisiana Higher Education Coordinating Board, renamed the Louisiana Board of Regents and has long been active in civic affairs in his city and state.