The Hartford Courant’s new news coverage plan, fashioned out of the remains of a staff once three or four times its size, came better into focus Friday.
It includes some new opportunities for a few up-and-c0ming reporters, lays the groundwork for an eventual tie-in with Fox61, and in theory focuses the staff’s limited firepower on high-value targets. It puts local news on a starvation diet, except in a few towns where circulation is the highest.
Managing Editor Bobbie Roessner has crafted a structure that divides up coverage into four operative parts: breaking news, state government and public issues, investigations, and regional news (including iTowns.) Presumably she will next turn her attention to reshaping the Features, Business News and Sports staffs.
Here are a few highlights:
- Alaine Griffin and Josh Kovner, both heavy hitters in Middletown and the shoreline for years, will be assigned to cover state-level stories on transportation, public safety and the environment.
- Ed Mahony, perhaps the state’s most authoritative reporter when it comes to matters involving the FBI and federal law enforcement, will turn his attention to Connecticut’s Washington, D.C. delegation.
- Matt Kauffman and Dave Altimari will continue as the investigative team.
- Videographers Al Chaniewski and Carolyn Moreau will be assigned to the breaking news team, which will be directed by Steve Busemeyer.
Here are a few low-lights:
- The entire Farmington Valley will be covered by two reporters (actually a “web host” and a reporter).
- The Enfield bureau, which once included a staff of reporters, bureau chief, assistant bureau chief and an associate publisher, is now a staff of one.
- The regional news team, consisting of 11 reporters and 4 web hosts, is smaller than the Manchester bureau staff once used to be. Much of the local news coverage will be in the form of briefs.
And I don’t know what kind of light this is: For the first time in perhaps a decade or more, editors have set story quotas for reporters (I’m sure they call them goals or targets) that specify the number of A1 and other stories they must produce per week.
When the TV and web/print newsrooms converge, and how, will be an interesting time. Right now that process consists mainly of staffers fussing over who gets what office space when Fox61 moves in. I’m sure there is some grander plan, or half a plan at least, but have not heard anything about it. (As if I would.)
The staff is scheduled to meet in groups early next week to get their final marching orders and sharpen their spears.
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It’s reassuring to know that they’re rearranging the deck chairs, even after the hull has buckled and the mast has collapsed onto the port side. Band leader Wallace Hartley is at the bow, keeping the passengers and crew calm and upbeat.
They should just give up now and save a lot of time, money and grief. Newspapers are obsolete. The web is the delivery medium now. I’m retired and I get most of my news from the web. Television news will be the next to go. Television news shows are boring. All of the local newscasts are the same, hard to tell one from another.
Eventually, they will understand that circulation will only follow an increase in local news coverage. If they continue to kill the local news, they will continue to hurt circulation (and then, of course, advertising). Folks, these days, get most state news from TV. If you want to know what is going on in your town, you buy a newspaper. The Courant, it seems, is handing over that entire “package” to weekly papers. The weekly papers will benefit. The Courant can only suffer.
Eventually, they will understand that circulation will only follow an increase in local news coverage.
They (most of the editors) may have understood it all along, but they may have been too intimidated (afraid for their jobs) to say anything. It’s not easy to say much when everything seems to be handed down by edict or fiat. Increasingly, the paper has come to look like one person’s blog, in design and content — not a metropolitan newspaper that reflects the communities it once served. The redesigned front page begins to make more sense if it’s viewed as essentially a hijacked broadsheet, transforming itself into one enthusiast’s blog — rather than the collaborative work of a group of dedicated journalists serving readers. I’m sure there must be some readers who like the changes, but I haven’t met any.
I use the odd term “enthusiast” deliberately. It’s used in religion (Wesley) and psychology. Here’s Wesley: “Enthusiasm in general may then be described in some such manner as this: A religious madness arising from some falsely imagined influence or inspiration of God.”
One may well descend into madness trying to figure out what’s happened to the newspaper.
Just a moment. You say, “The regional news team, consisting of 11 reporters and 4 web hosts, is smaller than the Manchester bureau staff once used to be.”
Can you please define “regional news team” for an old timer who hasn’t kept in touch. When I was at the Courant in the Seventies we had an entire State Desk plus a suburban operation under the City Desk. It employed several dozen reporters and many more stringers. Is that what you mean by “regional news team” or are you using a narrower definition? Thanks.
I was using the editors’ newly coined term for what used to be called, sort of, the State Desk. The Regional Team is the group of reporters and editors who cover the towns in the six circulation zones, including Hartford, which used to have its own desk.
Middletown, for example, which used to have two editors and a whole office full of reporters, now has three reporters. Greater New Britain has two reporters (a web host and a full time reporter) and the Farmington Valley has two staffers. During Mike Waller’s tenure, the Torrington office, which has been shut for years, had two reporters.
An off-topic discovery today: The Courant lives on as an arbiter of grammar and style at this site:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/italics.htm
“Also, do not italicize the apostrophe-s which creates the possessive of a title: ‘What is the Courant‘s position on this issue?’”
Also, note the photo of the the Courant‘s last copy editor to survive the layoffs, Albus Manutius, who foolishly didn’t take the buyout in 1514.
Wow, the Middletown bureau sure expanded after I left. We had no editors in the bureau (and not much in Hartford, come to think of it).
When I was there, the bureau had three Middletown reporters, counting the bureau chief, one East Hampton/Portland reporter and one covering Cromwell. Something like that. But just eleven for the entire state desk? Good gravy.
By the way, I know a lot of people from my era who are not members of this thing. You could have a really big group if you so desire. Of course, we are all old and doddering so I am not sure if you are interested.
Alfred, I remember the rule was that a meeting was never “held” and that it was “attorney” not “lawyer.” There was also an aversion to split infinitives.
I have been “holding” meetings and splitting infinitives with gay abandon ever since leaving the Courant. Sorry, make that The (capital T) Courant.
Oh, I forgot to mention that one of my colleagues at Business Week was a former member of the Courant family. Ted Driscoll’s widow Lisa. Very nice lady and a good reporter. I wonder what happened to her.
If the doddering crowd is interested in this site, then its members are more than welcome.
Most of us are too feeble to see the computer screen, alas.