Cancelling the Courant

The big news here, if you can call it big news, is that we've cancelled the Hartford Courant, the self-proclaimed oldest continously published newspaper in America, blah, blah, blah...

This was a significant move, I felt, especially since I was a journalism major, interned there three times, freelanced for them from 1999 to 2005, and was/am a journalist.

I guess I can boil it down to this: The paper stopped being relevant to me. This is common for papers, now. Newspapers are an old technology, and, besides, who has time to read them every day?

But it's beyond that, and this is why we cancelled our subscription. The Courant's writing is not remarkable. The story choice on prominent pages is uninteresting. Breaking news coverage is weak. The Sports section is decent, I have to say. (More sports stories should hit Page One, especially here in CT) The paper has sizable resources and should cover local, Connecticut and regional news better. Page One is often formulaic, and very predictable. The paper takes few risks. It is rare that I've seen a provocative human interest or investigative story on the front page. I am sick of reading about politicians in our state legislature being mired in stupid squabbles. It really doesn't matter to me.

The paper needs to focus on statewide, regional and national trends. Once in a while, reporter Rinker Buck, definitely the paper's best reporter, writes good pieces. But he writes infrequently. There is no one else on Broad Street whose writing is memorable. The columnists stink, which is unfortunate. This goes for the oped columnists, the CT Page columnists, and the alleged humor columnist. The paper is, generally, a bore. The most interesting feature for me in the last year or so has been the real estate ads on Sunday. This is a sad statement.

So where will I get my news? From the Internet - not the Courant's site, which is horrendous (way too cluttered and too tiny of a font), but from boston.com, nytimes.com and npr. I watch TV at night for local stuff. I don't think that I will miss the Courant, only the act of walking to the curb to get a paper on weekends.

The Courant, and other papers, need to drastically change their products, before they disappear sooner than expected. I am less interested in what's happening day to day in a community, and the mundane meetings editors make reporters attend, but I am interested in perspective pieces that are more in depth. The Courant hardly ever does that. And if it's done, the writing quality is poor. I rarely make it past the jump of the Page One or Connecticut page articles.

My former journalism professors, I'm sure, would frown. They might say that I'm not being informed. They may question my loyalty. It's not that I'm losing my faith in journalism -- it's here to stay -- but the mission of a lot of newspapers, especially the Courant, has to change from doing what they've always done, covering what they always have and presenting it in the same way, to examining weekly newsmagazines, such as TIME and Newsweek, and perhaps producing a smaller, shorter daily paper that is more relevant and interesting to its readership. If this does not happen, once-powerful, financially steady papers like the Courant will continue to lose its readers, its advertisers and credibility for the communities they're supposed to cover.