Stanley R. Tiner - The Shreveport Journal

The Shreveport Journal

In 1974, Tiner, then thirty-two, was recruited from The Times to become the editor of the afternoon daily, The Shreveport Journal, published by Douglas F. Attaway. The Journal was the smaller of the two Shreveport papers and was struggling to remain competitive. Tiner was seen as the "new blood" the paper needed. In 1976, the Attaways sold the paper to the Shreveport industrialist Charles T. Beaird, who was also an intellectual and a philanthropist. Beaird, a liberal Republican, and Tiner, a Democrat, moved The Journal, which had been characterized by its previous conservative and segregationist editorials during the Attaway tenure, far to the political left.

While at The Journal, Tiner offered an editorial position to former Mayor James C. Gardner, later the president of the first city council under the mayor-council government and also the vice-president of the Southwestern Electric Power Company. Gardner turned him down because of salary and retirement considerations, but Tiner often held up Gardner as his idea of a "model" public official. He wrote a lengthy editorial on Gardner's legacy as "Mr. Shreveport" when the councilman decided not to seek reelection in 1982.

Tiner stayed with Beaird until the fall of 1987, when he resigned as The Journal editor to mount an unsuccessful campaign to capture Louisiana's 4th congressional district seat. After the congressional race, he became a public relations spokesman for a natural gas company. The Journal closed in 1991 but operated as an editorial page within The Shreveport Times until the last day of 1999. Beaird died in 2006.