Storyteller and a character: Provincetown Advocate publisher Duane Steele dies at 83

Duane Steele governed his newsroom with "Duane Steele lessons."

The publisher of the weekly Provincetown Advocate hammered into his staff to always be accurate, to always follow a story, to not just recite what happened at a meeting but to provide context.

"He would say, 'Make sure you get the names right, the names and the streets, because if they can't trust you with the small stuff they'll never trust anything you write," recalled Susan Areson, 67, of Truro, who joined the newspaper in 1977 for her first professional job as a reporter.

Duane Steele, 83, died March 8. He was under hospice care at home for interstitial lung disease, according to an obituary provided to the Times, and had undergone heart bypass surgery years ago.

Duane Steele grew up in Provincetown and served in the military.

He was born on March 25, 1939, to Alden and Clotilda (Medeiros) Steele. In a 2013 interview at the Provincetown Mass. Memories Road Show, Steele described his Provincetown childhood — climbing trees, catching tadpoles and frogs, running away from snapping turtles — as "magical."

"But I had a Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn youth here," said Steele then.

After graduating from Provincetown High School in 1956, he served in the Navy and then attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In the mid-1960s, he joined the daily Springfield Union.

That's where he first met Brian Jones, 80, who also worked there as a reporter. Steele was intense in his approach, said Jones, whether he was "your editor or you were the news source he was pursuing .... he wasn't a shy man."

"He really liked a good story. That sounds trite, but he was a good storyteller in person and the same thing in print. He recognized a good story when he saw it," said Jones, of Newport, Rhode Island. "He liked a story with conflict and substance."

When Jones was ready for a new job, Steele encouraged him to try for the Providence Journal. Jones, who snagged a job there in 1966 and worked there for 35 years, calls the move “the career choice of my lifetime.” Steele joined the Journal himself shortly after, managing the paper’s West Bay news bureau.

Steele gave good career advice but possibly the worst advice on buying a car, one friend said.

“It was almost like working at the New York Times but not having to live in New York,” said Jones. “I owe Duane that.”

On the flip side, around the same time, Steele had also convinced Jones to buy a Saab. Like a lawn mower, the engine required a mixture of gas with a special oil in order to run. The car frequently “stalled at the wrong time,” said Jones, who carried a bag of spark plugs with him in case he needed a replacement.

It took Jones several years to pawn the car off onto somebody else.

“He gave me the best career advice that transformed my life and then recommended the worst car I ever owned .... but that's how persuasive he was. He was a good salesperson,” said Jones.

He returned to Provincetown in 1976 and bought the Provincetown Advocate.

In 1976, Steele and his then-wife, Elizabeth "Betty" Steele-Jeffers, moved to Provincetown and bought the Advocate, which was then a 107-year-old paper and dated back to 1869. In the 2013 interview at the Provincetown Mass. Memories Road Show, Steele said he wanted his children to experience growing up in the small village like himself.

Headquartered at 100 Bradford St., the newspaper was a family business: son Peter Steele was a writer, daughter Rose Steele was the business manager, and Mary-Jo Avellar, who married Steele after he and Steele-Jeffers divorced, was a columnist and arts writer.

Avellar could not be reached on Sunday for comment.

At the Advocate, Duane Steele nurtured new reporters.

In Provincetown, Steele became a teacher for a wave of burgeoning reporters.

Areson, now a Truro Select Board member, began working summers at the Advocate in 1977. She said he urged his staff to start writing as soon as possible before deadlines chased them and to add depth to news.

"It was very much context, facts and context," said Areson, who later became the deputy executive editor at the Providence Journal.

Jones subscribed to the Advocate and said he read it weekly.

"I loved the Journal and papers like the Post and the Globe and the leading papers but in a sense the Advocate was a superior paper. It was my favorite local newspaper. Maybe this was an illusion because I didn't live in Provincetown, but I really felt every week reading the paper I felt I knew everything I had to know," said Jones.

The Associated Press called the Provincetown Advocate a 'feisty' newspaper.

A 2000 Associated Press story described the Advocate as "feisty," and recounted that the newspaper once ran a verbatim transcript of a selectman's tape-recorded speech — including every incomplete sentence and grammatical error — after the town official complained a reporter had misquoted him.

For several years in the 1980s, Steele and Avellar ran the waterfront Red Inn, noted in Steele's obituary as a favorite haunt of Norman Mailer, who filmed his 1987 movie "Tough Guys Don't Dance" there.

In April 2000, Steele sold the 131-year-old Advocate to its competitor, the Provincetown Banner. The papers emerged, with the Advocate's flag and format abandoned.

"Now it’s a part of Provincetown history," Steele said about the Advocate in 2013.

In 2008, GateHouse Media New England announced it had acquired the Provincetown Banner, making it part of GateHouse Media New England’s (GHMNE) Cape Cod operations.

Gatehouse Media merged with Gannett in 2019 to become the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S.

After selling the Advocate, Steele was active in town government.

Once the paper closed, Steele served as a town harbormaster for 10 years and also joined the Finance Committee.

Steele is survived by his wife and Provincetown town moderator, Mary-Jo Avellar; his children, Rose Steele of Eastham, and Peter Steele of Provincetown; and 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.Steele leaves behind Ben, his 15-year-old long-haired dachshund.

According to his obituary, a memorial service is planned for spring with a date to be announced.

"He was a real character and a presence .... he had opinions which he shared and sometimes people didn't appreciate, but he was a good friend," said Areson.

Zane Razzaq writes about housing and real estate. Reach her at zrazzaq@capecodonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @zanerazz.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Provincetown Advocate publisher Duane Steele dies at 83