Stanley R. Tiner - A Political Reporter

A Political Reporter

Tiner began his newspaper career at the since defunct afternoon daily, the Texarkana Daily News in Texarkana, and the Minden Press-Herald, a small daily which specializes in local news, in Minden, the seat of Tiner's native Webster Parish. He was the Press-Herald managing editor from September 1969 until March 1970, when he thereafter left to join the staff of The Shreveport Times.

At The Times, he became the newspaper's chief political correspondent and covered the 1971–1972 gubernatorial campaign from which Edwin Washington Edwards became the dominant political figure in Louisiana for the rest of the 20th century. Edwards, after having barely secured the Democratic nomination over then State Senator and later U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., of Shreveport, faced a stronger-than expected Republican challenge waged by the then Metairie lawyer and later U.S. Representative and Governor David C. Treen. Tiner soon became, like John McGinnis (author of The Louisiana Hayride) one of the resident experts on the flamboyant Edwards and Louisiana politics in general.