Duane Alden Steele

Duane A. Steele, who published the Provincetown Advocate for nearly a quarter century, turning the historic weekly newspaper into a must-read authority on one of Cape Cod’s most iconic towns, died March 8. He was 83.

Mary-Jo Avellar, Mr. Steele’s wife and Provincetown’s town moderator, said that her husband had been under hospice care at their home for interstitial lung disease. Years earlier, he’d undergone complex heart bypass surgery.

Mr. Steele was a dynamic, persuasive story-teller, who relished a good yarn, whether told in person or in print. Under his stewardship, the Advocate ran exhaustive accounts of town government, along with analytical stories about the town’s fragile ecology and its relationship with the Cape Cod National Seashore.

A Provincetown native, Mr. Steele was passionate about the close-knit, sometimes contentious community at the tip of the Cape peninsula – celebrating its history and myths, and saying he’d been blessed with a Tom Sawyer-Huckleberry Finn boyhood, climbing trees and catching tadpoles.

But as a newspaper publisher, he imposed rigorous journalistic standards that sometimes brought him and the newspaper into conflict with its readers, advertisers and newsmakers.

His son, Peter Steele, an Advocate reporter, noted the pressures and rewards of small-town journalism, writing a few years ago that Mr. Steele’s guiding principle, passed onto his staff, was professional pride.

“The pride of knowing that when the Advocate hit the streets, you have given your readers everything you had,” Peter Steele wrote. “The pride of reporting the news fairly, honestly and accurately, even when your stories were about your friends and family.”

Mr. Steele was born March 25, 1939, the son of Alden and Clotilda (Medeiros) Steele, who were Provincetown natives and whose parents were immigrants from the Azores islands; one of his grandparents was a Grand Banks fisherman, another a dairy farmer.

Graduating from Provincetown High School in 1956, he served in the Navy, then attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His first jobs were at mid-sized metropolitan dailies, the Springfield Union in Massachusetts, where he covered city government, and at the Providence Journal, where he was manager of the Rhode Island paper’s West Bay news bureau.

In 1976, he and his then-wife, Elizabeth “Betty” Steele-Jeffers, moved to Provincetown. Mr. Steele said he wanted to run his own newspaper and to provide their children with the idyllic experiences he’d known.

In remaking the Advocate, which dated back to 1869, Mr. Steele drew on his training and experiences at the daily newspapers. For example, the Providence Journal published regional editions, showcasing community news that gave the statewide paper a hometown feel.

Mr. Steele repackaged existing stories from neighboring towns of Truro and Wellfleet, moving them to the Advocate’s front pages, dubbed the “Truro edition, the “Wellfleet edition,” a move he claimed quickly improved circulation.

In 2019, to celebrate Mr. Steele’s 80th birthday, Peter Steele produced a replica edition of the Advocate, which by then had been closed for nearly two decades after it was sold to the competing Provincetown Banner.

A spitting image of the former Advocate, the replica featured “stories” by former staffers, which provided a window into the weekly’s impact on its communities, and Mr. Steele’s journalistic philosophy and practices.

Susan Areson, an Advocate reporter who became one of the highest ranking women to run the Providence Journal, wrote that her former boss issued frequent do’s and don’ts of journalism, which the staff labeled “Duane Steele Lessons.”

One edict, Areson said, was that reporters, after covering a local council or board meeting, should immediately write their stories, even if publication was days away. “If you don’t get it done and Town Hall burns down,” Mr. Steele insisted, “then the only thing we’d have in the paper is the news of Town Hall burning down. “

Mr. Steele literally lived the Advocate’s journalism. The newspaper’s handsome headquarters at 100 Bradford Street, a stone’s throw from Town Hall, was remodeled, with living quarters on the third floor; the newsroom on the second; and advertising and business functions on the first.

Family members played key roles. Not only did Peter Steele work for the paper as a writer, Duane Steele’s daughter, Rose Steele, was the paper’s business manager. And

Mary-Jo Avellar, who married Mr. Steele after his divorce from his first wife, wrote a column called ‘The Way I See it,” along with features about the town’s nationally recognized arts and literary scene.

Avellar wrote in the replica edition that she was reluctant to take on the writing assignments, suggested by her husband, saying she was wary of people who both lived together and worked together. But she was pleased with the outcome:

“He recognized something in me which I never in my wildest dreams recognized in myself. He knew instinctively that I could write.”

The paper launched journalism and other careers. Susan Areson, went on to head the Providence Journal’s newsroom. Peter Steele became communications director for former Maine Gov. Paul LePage.

Peter Steele described his experience at his dad’s paper.

“I started working for Duane as a kid,” Peter Steele wrote, “and it was awesome-slash-horrible. He could be funny and gregarious, ferocious and unforgiving, kind and generous – sometimes all within the same hour. I loved him for it and I hated him for it.”

The Provincetown Independent’s editor, K.C. Myers wrote that when joining the Advocate, Mr. Steele warned that “all new reporters spell cemetery wrong. It’s not cemetary.” Myers noted also that “Duane had a lot of strength, with which he used to fight for what he believed in every day.”

Writing about the Advocate’s closing in 2000, the Associated Press recalled a selectman’s complaint of being misquoted, to which the Advocate responded by publishing a transcript of his recorded interview, grammatical slip-ups included. Still, the selectman regretted the paper’s sale: “Losing anything that is 100 years old is a bad thing.”

In the 1980s, Mr. Steele and Ms. Avellar ran the Red Inn, a favorite waterfront haunt of the writer Norman Mailer, who filmed his movie, “Tough Guys Don’t Dance” there. Mr. Steele, who promoted the town’s legend that the Pilgrims stopped in Provincetown before reaching Plymouth, Mass., staged “First Landing” reenactments on the beach in front of the Red Inn, to the delight of the inn’s guests.

After the Advocate closed, the couple remained active in town affairs. Avellar, a former select board member, presided at town meetings as town moderator. Mr. Steele, an avid sailor and boat owner, served as a harbormaster for about 10 years.

Mr. Steele was sad, but resigned to the closing of the Advocate as the newspaper business began to implode nationally,

“The paper was 131 years old and it was revered by the people of Provincetown” he said in a 2013 oral history interview about the town. “But anyway, (it’s) over and it’s done. Now, it’s a part of Provincetown history.”

Mr. Steele is survived by his wife, Mary-Jo Avellar; by his children, Rose Steele of Eastham, Mass. and Peter Steele of Provincetown; and by their mother, Elizabeth “Betty” Steele-Jeffers, of Eastham.

Also surviving him are his grandchildren: Alexandre Soulard Steele of Montreal, Canada; Anna Rose Stevenson of Eastham; Lily Hope Stevenson of Eastham and Warsaw, Poland; and Vanessa Elizabeth Steele of Auburn, Maine.

His sisters, Rose Marie Stephan, Lana Rae Argir, Michelle Kender and Bonnie McGhee all predeceased him.

Mr. Steele leaves behind Ben, his devoted long-haired Dachshund, aged 15.

A memorial service is planned in the spring, at a date to be announced.