Connecticut’s media landscape is vastly shifting as consumers are finding more of the news they want online, smaller newspapers are being sold and the future of the state’s most iconic newspaper – the Hartford Courant – remains cloudy as its staff and print circulation continue to shrink under a new owner.
Meantime, some traditional and nontraditional media organizations have seen opportunity in the market.
Hearst Connecticut Media Group — publisher of eight Connecticut daily newspapers, 13 weeklies and Connecticut Magazine — recently announced plans to enter the Hartford market by hiring 11 new newsroom employees to cover the region. The company has aggressively poached former Hartford Courant reporters and editors to fill out its expanding newsroom, which now has a statewide focus.
And the Connecticut Mirror, a 12-year-old online-only media outlet that covers state politics and public policy, has added to its 13-person newsroom over the past few years, proving that its nonprofit journalism model not only has staying power but legs.
Three other small Connecticut newspapers — the New Britain Herald, Bristol Press and Willimantic Chronicle — recently lost local ownership after being sold to the Rhode Island Suburban Newspaper, publisher of the Westerly Sun.
The shifting landscape is playing out against the larger backdrop of a struggling news media industry, as more readers and advertisers turn away from print media in favor of digital platforms.
The transition has been a bumpy one. While U.S. newspapers in recent years have been able to increase the percentage of revenue coming from digital advertising and subscriptions, not all have been able to survive the shift.
From fall 2018 to 2020, right before the pandemic created even more stress for the news industry, 300 U.S. newspapers closed, 6,000 journalists lost their jobs, and print newspaper circulation declined by 5 million, according to a report by the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Over a 15-year period ending in 2020, almost 25% of the 9,000 U.S. newspapers that were being published had gone under, the report found.
“There will always be a place for newspapers in this state and country regardless of their delivery system,” said Rich Hanley, a media expert who is an associate journalism professor and co-director of sports studies at Quinnipiac University. “The delivery system, though, of the present and future is clearly online. Physical newspapers will, overtime, disappear, although not the mega-papers like the New York Times.”
Courant’s troubles
Former Courant staffers and media experts say the country’s oldest continuously published newspaper has significant challenges ahead.
The paper reached its staffing heyday in 1994 with 400 newsroom employees. That number dropped to 135 in 2009. Today, those familiar with the Courant’s newsroom staffing levels say the company has fewer than 25 reporters. In April, the Courant’s last full-time photographer, Mark Mirko, left the company to join Connecticut Public, according to The Laurel, an online site that tracks Connecticut’s media industry.
There have been many bumps in the road during the last few years:
• Suffering from a declining workforce, several rounds of buyouts and discontent with its ownership, a majority of the Hartford Courant’s newsroom staffers unionized in February 2019.
• In October 2020, the Courant announced it would close its Hartford printing operation and outsource its printing to the Springfield Republican in Massachusetts.
• Two months later, the company announced it would shutter its longtime Hartford newsroom at 285 Broad St., and move to a fully remote workforce. Shortly after that, the Courant’s headquarters building was put up for sale.
Perhaps the most significant event was the Courant’s takeover last year by cost-cutting hedge fund Alden Global Capital, a move that was decried by staff and others, who launched a campaign to fend off the deal by trying to find a local ownership group.
That never materialized and Alden acquired Tribune Publishing — the former publicly-traded owner of the Courant, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Baltimore Sun and others — in May 2021 for $633 million.
WTNH-Channel 8 Managing Editor Rick Green spent more than three decades at the Courant over two stints. He left the paper as its managing editor at the end of January due to his mental health, he said.
“I left because it was becoming a seven-day-a-week, 24-hour job,” said Green, who had applied for but did not get the paper’s top editor job shortly before he left. “I care deeply about the Hartford Courant. I wish this [current turmoil] was not happening. I left for my mental health; it was too much.”
Green, who still has numerous friends at the paper, said the reporters that remain “are top quality and are doing their absolute best to keep the tradition of the Hartford Courant alive.”
“It’s heartbreaking what has happened to the Hartford Courant, as the newspaper has gone from being the dominant news product in the state to the point now where they have a skeleton staff of very hardworking reporters,” Green said.
“Morale is horrible,” he added.
He lamented the company’s new owner.
“These guys [Alden] have a plan,” Green said. “They did this in Denver and in California. They come in and strip [papers to their] bare-bones and make a ton of money. I do think the Courant will still be around [years from now], but I hope it’s under different ownership. I don’t think Alden is interested in making the newspaper a dominant force in Connecticut.”
Longtime Connecticut news fixture Duby McDowell was a working reporter for about 23 years and now owns Hartford-based McDowell Communications Group. She is also the publisher of The Laurel, which has reported on several high-profile Courant departures in recent months, including state Capitol reporter Daniela Altimari, as well as other young and veteran journalists who have left by choice.
At least three recently-departed Courant reporters have joined competitor Hearst Connecticut.
McDowell called the transformation of the Courant “tragic to watch.”
“I remember,” she said, “when it wasn’t so long ago that the governor would deliver the budget address and you’d see the army of Hartford Courant reporters arrive at the Legislative Office Building to cover their specific beats and analyze what was being proposed. You do not have that anymore. These days it falls on the shoulders of just a few people.”
Helen Bennett is the Courant’s relatively new executive editor. She was named to the position in December, replacing longtime top news executive Andrew Julien, now executive editor of the New York Daily News, also owned by Alden. Bennett was previously managing editor of the New Haven Register, which is owned by Hearst.
Bennett declined to comment for this story and Alden Global Capital could not be reached. The Courant has been actively trying to fill some open positions and has brought on new reporters in recent months as it looks to rebuild its ranks. New hires have included criminal justice, city of Hartford and race and social justice reporters, many recruited from other local news organizations.
The Courant on May 13 was advertising on its website about a half-dozen available newsroom jobs, including reporter and editor positions.
To replace lost print subscribers (the Courant’s average weekday circulation went from 94,810 in the first quarter of 2015 to 33,912 for the six-month period that ended March 30) the company — like most news organizations — has been focused on building its digital audience and subscriptions.
Quinnipiac’s Hanley said he believes the Courant’s brand is strong enough to “survive in its diminished state,” but it faces pressure from online sites and other competitors, including Hearst.
New Hartford competitor
Despite declining circulations, Connecticut newspaper publishers aren’t abandoning print, since it’s still an important revenue generator. But there is an intense focus to build up digital revenues, subscriptions and page views.
That’s the case at Hearst Connecticut Media Group, which is aiming to reach 100,000 total print and digital subscriptions this year across its various daily and weekly publications, according to Publisher Mike DeLuca and Senior Vice President of Content and Editor-in-Chief Wendy Metcalfe.
Part of that effort includes expanding into Greater Hartford, where Hearst has been hiring reporters in recent months as it tries to fill the news void left by the Courant’s decline.
However, it won’t be launching a print publication in the region. Instead, Hartford-centric stories will appear on Hearst’s CT Insider website, which launched last June to give readers easier access to statewide content on topics ranging from breaking news and investigations to sports, features and politics.
In the next few months, Metcalfe said Hearst Connecticut will have a newsroom staff of about 165 people, including 11 journalists in the Hartford region who will focus on enterprise and breaking news coverage. Hearst is also considering opening a Hartford newsroom.
“Hearst is consistently reinvesting in the newsroom,” Metcalfe said. “We have to prove we can deepen our journalism and grow readerships.”
She added: “We have to continue to evolve, and [offering] quality products is paramount to hold the print readers as best we can. The honest answer is that the bulk of our customers are largely looking for digital, but that does not mean print is not of interest to our readers. We have a firm commitment to print.”
DeLuca said Hearst has seen significant growth on its CT Insider website over the past 11 months, but declined to disclose traffic data. The strong traction so far “told us that there was an appetite for the content we were providing, so we beefed it up,” he said.
In addition to CT Insider, Metcalfe noted that Hearst Connecticut has also launched a statewide investigative team and placed a greater focus on data reporting.
Hearst Connecticut’s parent company — Hearst Corp. — is a New York City-based mass media and business information conglomerate that has diverse holdings. In addition to owning 24 dailies and 52 weeklies nationwide (including the San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle), its portfolio includes magazines and TV channels and stations, including stakes in A&E Networks and Bristol sports media giant ESPN.
Hearst said its newspapers nationwide ended last year with more than 300,000 paid digital-only subscriptions, an increase of 100,000, or 50% from the year before.
Online news sites proliferate
The Connecticut Mirror is, arguably, the leader of online-only news sites in the state. It was founded in January 2010 with four reporters, mostly former Hartford Courant journalists. Today it has 13 journalists and three open newsroom positions, according to Bruce Putterman, who has been CEO and publisher of the online nonprofit news organization since April 2017.
Putterman said the Mirror’s growth in recent years was propelled by an $830,000 grant in late 2019 from a venture philanthropy firm, the American Journalism Project. The money allowed the Mirror to build out its business office, including adding a business development position and engaging with a revenue consultant.
Putterman said the Mirror’s $2.1 million budget has roughly doubled in the last three years; its website has roughly 300,000 unique users a month, not including traffic its stories generate on other Connecticut news websites, which pay for access to the content.
Putterman said he thinks digital is the future in news media and the Mirror’s growth has allowed it to cover more topics that have been increasingly ignored by other shrinking news outlets.
Its main focus is covering the statehouse, where nonprofit news organizations nationwide have expanded their influence.
In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, the number of nonprofit news reporters who cover state capitols nationally has nearly quadrupled since 2014, and those journalists now account for 20% of the nation’s total state government press corps, up from 6% eight years ago.
“What happens in state government often has more of an impact on more people than on the federal level, and, in some cases, than at the local level,” Putterman said. “It’s also important to engage people in understanding state government so they can take part in the democratic process and make informed decisions. You need journalists to cover the state Capitol. You need someone to hold state government accountable.”
Putterman said only about 7% of CT Mirror’s overall revenue comes from advertising; more than 90% is contributed from individuals or foundations with “a tiny amount of corporate philanthropy.”
Other online, hyper-local news outlets have sprung up in Connecticut in recent years, including the Monroe Sun, a for-profit, one-man operation founded by Bill Bittar, a former reporter at the Waterbury Republican-American.
The site is still in its early stages — it earned about $25,000 in revenue last year — but has grown its traffic from 510,000 visitors in 2020 to 647,000 last year, Bittar said.
Bittar, who also worked in online journalism for Patch.com, said there was a void in Monroe when the Monroe Courier, the town’s hometown paper, folded in 2018.
The 50-year-old Monroe native and resident said it cost him about $1,000 to launch his website, which has five regular advertisers and covers a wide range of local news in the small Fairfield County town of 20,000 residents.
“People like the immediacy of online local news,” said Bittar, who has seen a spike in readers since adding sports coverage in July 2021. “They like to promote events that are coming up; there are many groups in town. I cover everything, big and small. If you are a daily paper, you have to choose what to cover; I cover everything.”
