Hartford Courant
The Hartford Courant is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is advertised as the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. A morning newspaper serving most of the state north of New Haven and east of Waterbury, its headquarters on Broad Street in Hartford, Connecticut was a short walk from the state capitol. It reports regional news with a chain of bureaus in smaller cities and a series of local editions. It also operates CTNow, a free local weekly newspaper and website.
The Courant began as a weekly called the Connecticut Courant on October 29, 1764, becoming daily in 1837. In 1979, it was bought by the Times Mirror Company. In 2000, Times Mirror was acquired by the Tribune Company, which later combined the paper's management and facilities with those of a Tribune-owned Hartford television station. The Courant and other Tribune print properties were spun off to a new corporate parent, Tribune Publishing, separate from the station, in 2014. In 2020 printing operations ceased in Hartford and were outsourced to Springfield, MA. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2020, all Hartford Courant staff permanently vacated the offices to work from home, and later in 2022 the printing press was dismantled and sold for scrap. Tribune Publishing agreed in May 2021 to be acquired by Alden Global Capital, which operates its media properties through Digital First Media. The transaction was finalized on May 25, 2021. While Alden Global Capital had purchased the building on 285 Broad St. in Hartford for $6.9 million in 2018 through an LLC it was tied to, the building will be put up for absolute auction in November 2025.
Origins and leading figures
According to the Library of Congress' database of U.S. newspapers, the origins of the Hartford Courant intertwines with the publication of the weekly Connecticut Courant. Founded by Thomas Green, the Connecticut Courant was first published on October 29, 1764. In the years following 1774, the title of the paper would be changed to The Connecticut Courant and Hartford Weekly Intelligencer, later simplified to The Connecticut Courant, and the Weekly Intelligencer, then reverted to the original form The Connecticut Courant from 1791 to 1914, when the publication ceased.In 1837, John L. Boswell, who had become the printer proprietor of The Connecticut Courant the previous year, also started the publication of The Daily Courant. In 1840, the title would be changed to The Hartford Daily Courant, to finally become The Hartford Courant in 1887. Based on the notion that the daily publication was an offshoot of the weekly Connecticut Courant, the newspaper board adopted in 2018 the motto "Older than the nation" as its slogan.
Other newspapers claim to be the oldest in the country. The New Hampshire Gazette, which started publication in 1756, trademarked the slogan of oldest paper in the nation after being revived as a small biweekly paper in 1989. Prior to 1989, the paper had all but disappeared into other publications for most of the 20th century, which makes the slogan doubtful. The New York Post also claims to be the oldest continuously published daily newspaper. However, even though the Post started daily publishing 35 years before The Connecticut Courant did, the Courant existed as a weekly paper for nearly 40 years before the New York Post was founded, making the Courant older. Also The Providence Journal claims to be the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the United States: the Journal began daily publishing 28 years after the New York Post, but some critics point at strikes at the Post in 1958 and 1978 as breaks in its continuity. Regardless, The Connecticut Courant existed as a weekly paper for nearly 70 years before The Providence Journal was founded.
In 1867, Joseph Roswell Hawley, a leading Republican politician and former governor of Connecticut, bought the newspaper, which he combined with the Press. Under his editorship, the Courant became the most influential newspaper in Connecticut and one of the leading Republican papers in the country.
An important figure in the history of the Courant is Emile Gauvreau, who became a reporter in 1916 and the managing editor in 1919. His energetic and often sensationalistic news style upset Charles Clark, the owner and editor. Clark fired Gauvreau when the journalist refused to stop a series of stories about false medical diplomas. Gauvreau would become later on a major figure in the New York City tabloid wars of the Roaring Twenties as the first managing editor of the New York Evening Graphic and later managing editor of the New York Mirror.
Another prominent editor of the Courant in the 20th century is Herbert Brucker.
Recent history
The Courant was purchased in 1979 by Times Mirror, the Los Angeles Times parent company, for $105.6 million. The first years of out-of-town ownership are described by Andrew Kreig, a former Courant reporter, in a book titled Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted America's Oldest Newspaper. One criticism expressed by Kreig is that the new owners were more interested in awards, and less interested in traditional Courant devotion to exhaustive coverage of local news.The Courant won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for inquiring into problems with the Hubble Space Telescope, and it won a 1999 Pulitzer Prize in the Breaking News category for coverage of a 1998 murder-suicide that took five lives at Connecticut Lottery headquarters. A series of articles about sexual abuse by the head of a worldwide Catholic order, published since February 1997, constituted the first denunciation of Marciel Maciel known to a wider audience.
In 2000, Times Mirror and the Courant became part of the Tribune Company, one of the world's largest multimedia companies. By then the Courant had acquired the Valley Advocate group of "alternative" weeklies started by two former Courant staff members in 1973. Tribune also owned two local television stations: Fox affiliate WTIC-TV and The CW affiliate WCCT-TV.
In 2005, The Courant became the most recent American newspaper to win the Society for News Design's World's Best Designed Newspaper award. In 2006, the paper's investigation into mental health and suicides among Americans serving in the Iraq war was featured in the PBS documentary series Exposé: America's Investigative Reports in an episode entitled "Question 7."
In late June 2006, the Tribune Co. announced that Courant publisher Jack W. Davis Jr. would be replaced by Stephen D. Carver, vice president and general manager of Atlanta, Ga., TV station WATL. In March 2009, Tribune replaced Carver with Richard Graziano, who was given a dual role as Courant publisher and general manager of Tribune's two Hartford television stations. In May of the same year, Tribune announced that Jeff Levine, a newspaper executive with a background in marketing, would become "director of content" and that the editor or "print platform manager" of the Courant would report to Levine as would the news director of WTIC-TV. Shortly after that, the Courant's two highest ranking editors were let go.
After 2010, Courant has offered early retirement and buyout packages to reduce staff as it continues to experience declines in advertising revenue. There have also been layoffs and reduction in pages. Newsroom staff peaked in 1994 at close to 400 staff, down to 175 staff by 2008, and 135 staff in 2009.
Tribune Company brought frequent changes in the Courant top leadership. On November 18, 2013, Tribune appointed Nancy Meyer as publisher, succeeding Rich Graziano who left to become president and general manager of WPIX-TV in New York City.
In 2014, the Courant purchased the ReminderNews chain of weekly newspapers. The Reminder name remained on the mastheads of all editions until November 2015, when the papers were redesigned and renamed Courant Community.
On October 10, 2014, Tribune Company announced the appointment of Rick Daniels as publisher of the Courant, succeeding Nancy Meyer, who was promoted to publisher and CEO of the Orlando Sentinel.
Andrew Julien was named the combined publisher and editor in March 2016, replacing Tom Wiley, who departed after two months.
In 2018, the Hartford Courant joined more than 300 newspapers in releasing editorials in response to President's Trump's anti-media rhetoric, a show of solidarity initiated by The Boston Globe. The paper stated, "The Hartford Courant joins newspapers from around the country today to reaffirm that the press is not the enemy of the American people."
In October 2020, the Courant announced that it would be discontinuing printing the paper in Hartford and outsourcing future printing to the Springfield Republican in Massachusetts.
In December 2020, Tribune Publishing announced that it would be closing the Courant Broad Street newsroom by the end of the year with no current plans to open another. On its website as of 2023, the Courant lists its mailing address as 100 Pearl Street in Hartford.
In January 2024, it was announced Courant Community newspapers was to cease publication on January 18.