On a summer night in 1989, Chris Russo Blackwood and Wanda Horn watched with tear-filled eyes as the printing press hummed to life, transforming their decade-long dream into reality.

When the pair announced their departure from The Morning Advocate, where Horn had spent 24 years and Blackwood 11, friends, family and dedicated readers of the People section were shocked. They also doubted the duo’s new pursuit of a city social magazine would work.

Though there is no official connection, Horn and Blackwood felt they were carrying on the legacy of The Register, which media pioneer Orene Muse founded in 1949. As a student at LSU, Horn had interned under Muse. When Blackwood arrived at The Morning Advocate, she and Horn became close friends. They often discussed what it would be like to publish a magazine dedicated to sharing happy news, covering the city’s bustling social scene and highlighting interesting people. In 1989, they decided to find out once and for all, what if.

Blackwood recalls being turned down for a business loan at two banks because the women insisted that the loan not include their husbands as co-signers. The third bank, where they knew a board member who vouched for them, secured their business loan at 12%—the best deal they could get in the slowing economy of the late 1980s.

Print seemed a fickle media at the dawn of the computer age. But onward they pushed with the blessing of Muse. The pair was determined as ever to create a magazine that would serve as a cultural history of Baton Rouge for decades to come.

“We closed out 35 combined years of daily newspaper experience to begin a new mission: to give this community a more personal touch in an age when computers and phone modems encourage more isolated media forms,” Blackwood wrote in the editor’s note of the premiere edition. “Orene, we too want to thank you for the glamour, for that different perspective on Baton Rouge that other media couldn’t give us, for that personal look at ourselves and our friends, and most of all, for your wonderful hats.”

Horn hit the ground running on advertisement sales while Blackwood handled everyday operations. “We were perfect complements to each other,” Blackwood wrote in a 2008 blog for a HuffPost series about the meaningful relationships women forge. “Between Wanda, ever the people person with the steady, helpful personality, and me, the impatient driver with an eye always on the bottom line, together we covered the entire spectrum on the DISC personality test.”

Before the era of digital ease, the team meticulously pieced together each edition by hand—pasting columns of text and Amberlith-protected black-and-white photos onto boards. “Everything took forever,” Blackwood says, reflecting on the many late nights spent perfecting each board before loading them on the midnight bus bound for the Alexandria press. For the first year, she and Horn followed the bus to Alexandria to read the negatives as an added precaution. “This would often mean leaving Baton Rouge at
4 a.m. and not returning until 10 or 11 p.m.,” Blackwood wrote in the April 1997 cover story “Remembering Wanda Horn,” published the month following Horn’s untimely death.

The sudden death of a co-founder and co-publisher could have ended inRegister, but Horn and Blackwood had prepared. A buy-sell agreement, funded by life insurance policies, allowed Blackwood to carry on their shared vision. From the start, they aimed to create not just a personal legacy but a lasting publication for the city. The two were business partners and the best of friends. They worked tirelessly, covering events five to six nights a week while juggling writing, publication and even launching a TV show, following in the footsteps of Muse, who helmed a radio show on WJBO and a TV show on WAFB.

“inRegister’s brand was strong, so the magazine continued to evolve with the times—in its format and content—with the help of an extremely dedicated staff,” Blackwood says.

Together, the team of writers, photographers and salespeople created new traditions and carried on others, including, of course, wearing a hat to every outing.

After 20 years of sending inRegister to press, Blackwood sold the magazine in 2009 to Louisiana Business Inc., which was acquired and renamed Melara Enterprises in late 2021. “Selling was always my goal,” Blackwood explains. “I thought it was the magazine’s best road to continued success. And here we are, 15 years later!”

Over the years, inRegister has left some traditions behind, namely the hats. Still, others are likely to remain for another 35 years, like chatting about the weekend before getting down to business, loudly proclaiming love for an idea, article or layout, and putting care, attention and time into bringing stories about the very best of Baton Rouge to print time and time again.