Tallahassee Democrat turns “Republican” for day
Shift Supervisor Jorge Arroyo dives in to the newly renamed "Tallahassee Republican," tossing aside a hundred years of tradition for an April Fools' Day joke. (Photo: Joe Rondone/Democrat)

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As an April Fools’ Day prank, the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper renamed itself the “Tallahassee Republican” on Friday.

“It’s a one-day special and our little April Fools’ joke — designed to acknowledge those who supposedly wince at our name,” wrote retired columnist Gerald V. Ensley Jr.

Ensley explains that the newspaper, which has had “Democrat” in its name since its beginnings in 1905, isn’t “a tool of the Democratic Party” and anybody who still thinks that “doesn’t read this newspaper or know our history.”

(Indeed, the paper runs a regular column by Extensive Enterprises Media publisher Peter Schorsch, not known to be a Democrat himself.)

“We’re proud of our name,” writes Ensley, who retired last year after 35 years with the paper.

“It was given to us by our founder, John G. Collins, who announced in the first edition of the Weekly True Democrat on March 3, 1905, that this newspaper would ‘endeavor to preach and practice the undying principles, and to follow the true and tried doctrines of the ‘Old Time Democracy’ of the Fathers … the ancient and time-honored body of established Democratic principles,” he said.


Disclosure: Jim Rosica was a staff writer at the Democrat 1997-2005 and his desk was next to Ensley, who referred to him as “Jimmy the R” for most of that time.

Jim Rosica

Jim Rosica is the Tallahassee-based Senior Editor for Florida Politics. He previously was the Tampa Tribune’s statehouse reporter. Before that, he covered three legislative sessions in Florida for The Associated Press. Jim graduated from law school in 2009 after spending nearly a decade covering courts for the Tallahassee Democrat, including reporting on the 2000 presidential recount. He can be reached at [email protected].



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