Hearst Connecticut Media owns the Connecticut Post as well as dailies in Danbury, Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich. Add the New Haven Register and two other Connecticut dailies to the list. And Connecticut Magazine too. As former Mayor Bill Finch said often, “It’s all about the clicks.”
As singular daily newspapers go the Hartford Courant is the mother of print and digital media outlets in the state. But all these Hearst properties now provides a major flex in print circulation and online web traffic for advertising buys. A large question looms, will all these daily properties someday be converted in a singular name change under the “Connecticut” banner? Or will they maintain the individual local name brands?
And where will the Post’s editorial department end up? The Post building at 410 State Street is for sale.
From the CT Post:
Further expanding its coverage of Connecticut, Hearst announced Monday it has acquired three daily and eight weekly newspapers and their accompanying websites from Digital First Media, including the New Haven Register and Connecticut Magazine.
It marks the second Connecticut acquisition in the past year for Hearst, which purchased The Hour, of Norwalk, in 2016, solidifying its coverage of Fairfield County. Hearst also owns the Connecticut Post, based in Bridgeport; The Advocate, of Stamford; Greenwich Time; and The News-Times, based in Danbury, in addition to six weekly newspapers in southwestern Connecticut–the New Canaan News, Darien News, Wilton Villager, Westport News, Fairfield Citizen and New Milford Spectrum.
The print and digital assets in Wednesday’s deal, which include The Register Citizen of Torrington, and The Middletown Press, reach more than 470,000 households combined and 1.4 million unique online visitors, according to a news release. They extend Hearst Connecticut Media Group’s news operations, advertising services and audience reach across New Haven, Middlesex and Litchfield counties.
Full story here.
Will OIB be next?
Such consolidation and dominance by one news organization also limits and consolidates — and inevitably significantly slants/filters — the coverage and presentation of the news and editorial messaging in its catchment area… Inevitably, it results in larger and larger blinders over the public vision of the important aspects of their world… Nothing against Hearst or the Post, but this doesn’t bode well for the public…
How many excellent journalists — with their particular important areas of interest and expertise will be silenced by this consolidation?…
News operations such as OIB will have a larger void to fill in Connecticut now. And the public will be drawn to these fonts of informational/intellectual diversity like mosquitos to a swamp-based nudist colony… (I suspect that operations and focus of the Connecticut Hearst organization will completely shift to Stamford soon…)
Pretty soon, all of the relevant Bridgeport news will come out of OIB and Doing It Local… (Maybe WICC will want to try news coverage again? Maybe an OIB/Doing It Local collaboration?)
Mergers and acquisitions move an industry toward monopoly status resulting in price appreciation for the remaining media assets. Scarcity creates value.
The relative scarcity of something that is valued frequently results in a price increase (that, in turn,is of value to the asset or item owner).
As in, “a luxury once enjoyed becomes a necessity”!
What is scarce in too many areas today are the facts and the truths they contain. So status quo continues though people know there is something wrong.
If “truth” is scarce, will it become valued in terms of the time, talent, expertise and passion necessary to produce it in forms visible to and actionable by the people of a community?? Time will tell.