Louisiana

The Acadiana Advocate

The Advocate is Louisiana's largest daily newspaper, serving the cities of Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette with an average daily circulation of just under 100,000 and an online audience of 20 million page views per month. In 2019, the Lafayette staff was expanded, doubling in size, to reflect the company’s commitment to local journalism in South Louisiana. Our newsroom covers the parishes of Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, Iberia, Vermilion, Acadia and Evangeline.

Joni Hess

Joni Hess covers the quickly developing communities of St. Tammany Parish for The Times- Picayune and The Advocate, a news organization in New Orleans. Hess is a native of New Orleans, which sits on the south shore of St. Tammany. Previously, she was a U.S. reporting fellow for a global media organization, openDemocracy, where she covered the imprisonment of Cameroon asylum seekers, discrepancies in Black maternal health care, and infringements on women and LGBTQI rights. As a freelancer, Hess received a reporting grant from New America to cover the lack of access to paid leave policies for families. Her feature appeared in The Lily, a publication of The Washington Post. Hess graduated from Xavier University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and went on to earn a master’s in social work.

Joshua Rosenberg

Joshua Rosenberg covers the environmental beat for The Lens, a nonprofit digital newsroom based in New Orleans, where he reports on storm surges, hurricanes, and the continuing disappearance of wetlands. Prior to joining The Lens, Rosenberg reported on federal tax policy for the legal newswire Law360, tracking down stories in the halls of Congress before moving into a more features-oriented role. As a 2014 Teach For America corps member, he taught high school history in Indianapolis. Rosenberg hails from Roxbury, New Jersey, and he earned his undergraduate degree in history and secondary education from William Paterson University, and holds a master’s degree in public affairs from Brown University.

Lara Nicholson

Lara Nicholson covers the Florida Parishes in southeast Louisiana for The Advocate, one of Louisiana’s largest publications. A recent graduate of Louisiana State University, Nicholson holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and political science, and was editor-in-chief of The Reveille, the student-run paper. She is a native of Baton Rouge, and has interned twice at The Advocate. Her reporting has taken her to the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, where she spent three days covering the escape of Cara, a 12-foot, 100-pound albino Burmese python, who snuck out of her aquarium in the middle of the night.

The Times-Picayune and The Advocate

The Advocate is Louisiana’s largest daily newspaper, serving the cities of Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lafayette, and their surrounding regions. The Advocate is committed to providing comprehensive coverage of local news, City Hall, the state house, politics, business, environment and other areas of general interest for our readers, in print and online. With a news and editorial staff of approximately 105 reporters, editors, designers, photographers and digital journalists, The Advocate is the largest daily newspaper in New Orleans and the only print news outlet committed to covering all aspects of the city.  

The Times-Picayune and The Advocate

The Advocate is Louisiana’s largest daily newspaper, serving the cities of Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lafayette, and their surrounding regions. The Advocate is committed to providing comprehensive coverage of local news, City Hall, the state house, politics, business, environment and other areas of general interest for our readers, in print and online. With a news and editorial staff of approximately 105 reporters, editors, designers, photographers and digital journalists, The Advocate is the largest daily newspaper in New Orleans and the only print news outlet committed to covering all aspects of the city.  

The Lens

The Lens is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public-interest digital newsroom, dedicated to investigative and explanatory journalism. Its mission is to educate, engage and empower the people of New Orleans by providing the information and analysis necessary to advocate for more accountable and just governance. The Lens grew out of a citizen journalist’s drive to track demolitions after Hurricane Katrina.

Marie Fazio

Marie Fazio reports on St. Tammany Parish for The Times-Picayune and The Advocate, a news organization based in New Orleans. Previously, she was a reporting fellow at The New York Times, covering breaking news and general assignment reporting. Fazio has written crime and feature stories and breaking news for the Chicago Tribune, and her series highlighting disability issues in Illinois earned her an award from the Chicago Headline Club for best investigative/public service reporting. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Fazio worked at the student paper, The Observer, and has also reported at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Florida Times-Union, in her hometown of Jacksonville. She is an avid runner and enjoys the simpler things in life, like sunrises, hot coffee and paper maps.

Robert Finn

Robert James Finn covers Louisiana's Florida Parishes for The Advocate in Baton Rouge. As an intern for VTDigger, a nonprofit website covering daily news in Vermont, he reported on COVID-19's effects on the state economy and legislature. Finn has covered healthcare inequity in Mississippi for a series partnership between the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and the Pulitzer Center, and his work has appeared in the Clarion-Ledger, the Hattiesburg American, MLK50, and Indian Country Today. As a student at Middlebury College, he worked in Guatemala on an initiative to revitalize Mayan languages spoken in the country's highlands, played basketball, and was managing editor of the student newspaper, The Middlebury Campus, where he helped direct the publication's transition to digital platforms as students were sent home in the first weeks of the pandemic. Finn graduated in February 2021 with a degree in history and Spanish. He's from Mill Valley, California.

The Times-Picayune and The Advocate

The Advocate is Louisiana’s largest daily newspaper, serving the cities of Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lafayette, and their surrounding regions. The Advocate is committed to providing comprehensive coverage of local news, City Hall, the state house, politics, business, environment and other areas of general interest for our readers, in print and online. With a news and editorial staff of approximately 105 reporters, editors, designers, photographers and digital journalists, The Advocate is the largest daily newspaper in New Orleans and the only print news outlet committed to covering all aspects of the city.