Rob Holbert is co-publisher and managing editor of Lagniappe, Mobile’s weekly newspaper. Rob helped found the newspaper after a career that started as a police reporter and columnist at the Mississippi Press in Pascagoula. He followed that with a stint as a deputy press secretary for then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott in Washington, D.C.
After leaving Capitol Hill, Rob worked ghost-writing opinion articles for publication in some of the nation’s largest newspapers. From 1999 – Aug. 2010 he was the faculty adviser for the University of South Alabama student newspaper, The Vanguard, and in 2002 started Lagniappe with his business partner Ashley Trice. The paper now prints 25,000 copies every week, is distributed throughout Mobile and the Eastern Shore and is one of Alabama’s largest weekly newspapers.
According to Scarborough Research, Lagniappe has nearly 80,000 print readers each week and an additional 40,000 readers a month online and in newsletters, and 37,000 followers on Facebook.
Rob has won numerous statewide and regional awards for column writing and was a finalist for the 2022 Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s David Carr Award for investigative reporting.