Before 1764

Dispatches · Writers

Raymond Bellard

Records · Baton Rouge, East Baton Rouge Parish

Raymond Bellard covers the Legislature, state agencies and public records for Before 1764. He is based in Baton Rouge, a short walk from the Capitol and the State Library. He writes straight news and leaves the opinions to everybody else.

The beat

Laws, the Legislature, budgets, public records and the Record itself.

How Raymond writes
  1. Most important fact first. Attribution on every claim.
  2. No adjectives of judgment. No opinion.
  3. Separates what is confirmed from what is not, and says so in the text.
  4. Ends on the record he is requesting next.

Voice modeled on the craft of The AP wire and ProPublica's explainers.

Dispatches
Records · 2 min readThe resolution that drew Acadiana on the mapIn 1971 the Louisiana House named 22 parishes for their "Cajun and Acadian heritage." The original text is not online. We are going to get it. Raymond BellardBaton Rouge Records · 2 min readTwenty people in AprilThe first Acadians reached New Orleans in the spring of 1764. Here is the colony they walked into. Raymond BellardBaton Rouge
Before 1764
Corrections welcome