Communications and the Media in Connecticut

By Christine Brendel Scriabine, Guilford, Connecticut

As inhabitants of the age of instant communication and the information revolution, it is difficult to imagine the paucity of information and the delays in the transmission of news that prevailed in the first half of Connecticut's history. In the early years of the colony's existence, information was passed from place to place primarily by travelers. In 1672 when a mail service was established between Boston and New York over a system of post roads, inhabitants of eastern Connecticut were incorporated into one of the first formal structures for the transmission of information in the American Colonies. The first organized system of post offices for the colonies was created by parliament in 1711. Before, and even after, the establishment of post offices, official and other vital information was often conveyed to the public from the pulpits of churches.

In the first half of the seventeenth century printing and paper were so expensive that printed material was at a premium. One-page broadsides, official edicts, sermons, and almanacs formed the bulk of the publications of the colony's printers. Books were primarily imported from England.

Beginning in the latter part of the seventeenth century, ships arriving from England apparently carried examples of recently established newspapers to the fledgling Connecticut colony. Throughout the Colonial Period, the great London journals of opinion would remain the prime sources of information for Americans, particularly with regard to foreign and court affairs. The Whig point of view that many of these journals espoused would heavily influence American political thinking. In 1704 when the first American newspaper, the Boston News-Letter, started publication, colonists had their first opportunity to read about imperial matters from an American point of view.

In 1755 Connecticut's first newspaper, the Connecticut Gazette, was published in New Haven by James Parker. This four-page weekly emphasized the military news of the French and Indian War and shipping information invaluable to the city's merchants. During this period, financial success for a Connecticut newspaper was difficult with readers restricted because cities were small and mail service limited. Another problem was that news acquisition was complicated since a printer had to depend on travelers, letters, and other newspapers for information. Local news, such as crimes and accidents, was most often not carried in early newspapers because such news was conveyed much more rapidly by word of mouth in taverns and the community. In lieu of hard news, advertising often comprised a large portion of a paper. It was not unusual to have both the front page and fully one-half of the total paper devoted to advertising.

Connecticut's next two papers were launched in New London. Timothy Green published the New London Summary from 1758-1763. In 1763 a nephew, another Timothy Green, took over the presses and launched the New-London Gazette which enjoyed a long life. Another member of the same family, Thomas Green, who had been the editor of the Connecticut Gazette for James Parker, founded the Connecticut Courant in Hartford in 1764. This paper would become the oldest American newspaper in continuous publication in the same city. Other pre-Revolutionary newspapers in Connecticut were the Connecticut Journal and New Haven Postboy (the predecessor to the New Haven Journal-Courier) published in New Haven by Thomas Green and the Norwich Packet, and the Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island Weekly Advertiser first published in Norwich by Alexander and James Robinson and later by John Trumbull.

The Revolutionary ferment in Connecticut in the 1760s was fostered by a number of the colony's printers. The British attempts at increased imperial control after the Treaty of Paris of 1763 radicalized the colony's printers. The Courant, which almost immediately from its inception became a major colonial newspaper distributed not only in Connecticut but also in western Massachusetts and New Hampshire, was a leader in criticism of British policy. The depth of the commitment of the press to the Patriot cause can be seen during the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-1766. During this period, two of the colony's papers, the Connecticut Gazette and the New-London Gazette, risked serious legal reprisals by publishing without stamps, and the Courant fell silent for five weeks. During the ensuing years of turmoil Ebenezer Watson, the editor of the Courant from 1768 to 1777, became a leading proponent of the Patriot cause whose voice reached many beyond Connecticut's borders. With the exception of the Norwich Packet, Connecticut's press helped to establish an American point of view and advocated increasingly militant actions towards British rule and those who sympathized with it. In 1776 the Tory publishers of the Packet were forced to flee to the more congenial surroundings of New York City, and during the Revolutionary period all of the state's newspapers were propagandists for the Patriot cause.

During the Revolutionary War Connecticut's newspapers flourished. The press benefited from the absence of serious war damage and from the state's leadership in the production of printing materials. In 1768 Abel Bud of Killingworth began developing the first American-made type, and Amos Doolittle of New Haven produced the first American printing presses in 1769. A paper mill was established at Norwich by Christopher Leffingwell in 1766.

After the British capture of New York City, the Courant probably had the largest circulation of any paper on the continent and even ran its own paper mills to supply its needs. Besides printing news helpful to the Patriot cause, the Courant's editors also published Noah Webster's famous spelling book and John Trumbull's M'Fingal during the War. Both of these publications were significant contributions to the growth of the national spirit.

The circulation of newspapers generally grew as an anxious public clamored for war news. What the readers were unaware of was that many of the printed accounts of American victories and British atrocities were false. Much of the falsification of the news was not intentional. News was often gathered from second-hand sources, and such reports took on a more optimistic cast the more often they were told. When the news was definitely bad, editors felt it their duty to have it cause as little damage to morale as possible. The papers were extremely active in the pursuit of the Patriot cause on the homefront.  Newspapers printed the names of suspected Tories and generally condemned those who were less than enthusiastic about the Patriot cause and the sacrifices the war entailed. Freedom of dissent was sacrificed in favor of welding together a Patriot consensus.

In the postwar years, Connecticut's newspapers became advocates of a centralized national government. The Courant backed the call for the Constitutional Convention and advocated stronger government to maintain domestic peace and protect property. The Federalist posture of the state's press was not challenged until the late 1790s when followers of Jefferson founded the American Mercury in Hartford and the Bee in New London. The Bee carried articles sharply criticizing political practices in many towns, especially the "stand-up" law of 1801 which called for standing up or showing hands to vote, a practice which discouraged opposition to Federalist control. The Federalists secured revenge for the Bee's criticisms when Charles Holt, the paper's editor, was fined $300 and given three months in jail for violation of the Sedition Act of 1798.

In the first half of the nineteenth century there was a substantial increase in the number of papers in the state. In 1817 when the Democratic Hartford Times was founded there were ten Connecticut newspapers, seven of which were still closely identified with the political views of the dying Federalist party. The 1820s saw a great explosion in the newspaper business and the addition of four new papers in Hartford alone. The state's first Catholic newspaper, the Catholic Press, the ancestor of the present Catholic Transcript, appeared in this decade. By the 1830s the influence of Connecticut's journalists reached far beyond the state's borders. Emigrants from the state retained their subscriptions to the staunchly Whig Courant as they settled in upper New York state or the Western Reserve. By the 1840s the Courant had more readers out of the city than in it. It had become the state's first daily paper in 1837, but it was the weekly edition that was most influential out of the city. The state's journalists also reached many out-of-state through numerous religious papers published in Connecticut and distributed nationwide, and through the four Connecticut magazines. The quality of journalism in the state was also high. John Greenleaf Whittier edited the New England Weekly Review published in Hartford; Gideon Welles wrote editorials for the Hartford Times and in 1856 helped to launch the Hartford Press, which was one of the state's first Republican papers; and future governor, Thomas H. Seymour, was editor of the Hartford Jeffersonian.

The Civil War, like other wars, increased newspaper circulation. Most of the state's papers backed the Union-oriented, Republican party. A notable exception was the Bridgeport Evening Farmer edited by Nathan S. Morse and William S. Pomeroy. The Bridgeport paper gloried in the Union defeat at First Bull Run and portrayed the rebels as revolutionaries fighting for their inherent rights. The paper paid a price for its position, however, when it was demolished by an angry mob on August 24, 1861. Morse was driven out of the state, but Pomeroy resumed publication the next year and avoided provocative editorials.

The amount and quality of news took a quantative leap starting in the 1860s with a growth in telegraph communications. The number of advertisers also grew as the economy boomed, and the number of daily readers enlarged as railroads became available to carry the morning papers to towns all over the state.

Growing populations in the second half of the century led to further growth in the number and variety of publications. The most successful of the new newspapers was The Bridgeport Post founded by George Washington Hills in 1883. The Post was started as a one-cent daily to appeal to workingmen and to "defend the interests of workingmen against the interests of monopolists and capitalists." By 1890 this new paper had a circulation of 40,000 and printed a special afternoon edition in Norwalk each day. General features in late nineteenth-century Connecticut journalism included increased competition, larger circulations, more objective reporting, a preoccupation with "sensational" stories, and the use of national news services.

In the latter part of the century, some of the state's citizens played a significant role in one of the major advances in American communications. On January 28, 1878, twenty-one citizens of New Haven became the world's first subscribers to commercial telephone exchange service. A demonstration of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in New Haven gave one of the city's residents, George Coy, the idea to apply for a Bell franchise. After receiving a franchise for New Haven and Middlesex counties in 1877, he then invented a switchboard that could handle two calls at a time. Up to this time the only telephone service that existed used two sets of phones that connected one place with another. The success of Coy's service impelled him to print the world's first telephone directory. By the end of the century, Coy's company, which was to become the Southern New England Telephone Company, had over 15,000 subscribers. By the early 1980s, there were 2,669,911 telephones in the state.

The most noteworthy advance in communications in the first half of the twentieth century was the radio. On December 10, 1922, station WDRC in New Haven inaugurated radio broadcasting in Connecticut, and by 1928 four other stations were on the air: WTIC in Hartford; WCAL in Storrs dividing time with WDRC; and WCWC in Danbury dividing time with WICC in Bridgeport. By 1930 nearly fifty-five percent of all state families owned radios.

At present there are thirty-nine AM stations in the state, most of which are lower powered, and thirty-five FM stations, eleven of which are either educational or non-profit. There are five 50,000-watt FM stations but only one 50,000-watt AM station-WTIC in Hartford. Most of the state's radio stations are locally owned and oriented but many listeners are served by powerful New York and Massachusetts stations that carry network broadcasting and serve as a nationalizing influence.

In the second half of the twentieth century, television has been the fastest growing medium of communications and a major force breaking down remaining state and regional boundaries. The state has nine television stations. Four are educational and run by the Connecticut Telecommunications Corporation, one is religious and run by the Faith center, and four are commercial and carry network broadcasting. One of the commercial stations, WFSB in Hartford is owned by a major communication company (Post-Newsweek). Currently the fastest growing segment of the television industry is cable television. There are twenty-two CATV companies in the state. This advance in communications may offer an opportunity to return to more local-origin programming.

The structure of the state's newspaper industry has also been transformed in the second half of the twentieth century. Following national trends, competition among newspapers in major cities has ceased to exist, and no Connecticut city has competitive newspapers. Newspaper mergers and failures have marked the past few decades. The state has been left with twenty-five daily and seventy weekly papers. Following national trends, many of the state's newspapers have been taken over by large communications companies. Capital Cities Communications, for example, owns thirteen community newspapers in the state.

In most forms of the media and communications Connecticut is now part of a national market. The only visible countertrend is the flourishing state of small publishing in the state that cater to local tastes and print books on regional topics. In what is virtually a cottage industry of the electronic age, small entrepreneurs are creating a renaissance in this one area of regional awareness.

LARGEST DAILY NEWSPAPERS*

            City                              Newspaper                                Circulation

            Hartford                         Hartford Courant (M)                   212,016

            New Haven                    The Register (E)                        137,881

            Bridgeport                     Bridgeport Post (E)                    75,608

            New York                      New York Times (M)                  60,000

            New Britain                    The Herald (E)                           40,000

            Danbury                        Danbury News-Times (E)            40,000

            Manchester                   Journal Inquirer (E)                     40,000

            New London                  The Day (E)                               39,052

            Norwich                         Norwich Bulletin                         38,500

            New Haven                    Journal-Courier (M)                     37,496

            Waterbury                     Waterbury Republican (M)          36,575

            Waterbury                     Waterbury American (D)             35,099

            Stamford                       The Advocate                            30,144

            Meriden                         Morning Record & Journal (M)     29,051

            Bristol                           Bristol Press (E)                        25,300

            Norwalk                         The Hour (E)                              21,378

            Middletown                    Middletown Press (E)                  21,078

*[Connecticut Almanac, 1982 (West Hartford: Imprint, 1982), p. 221)]

For Further Reading

Cutler, Charles L. Connecticut's Revolutionary Press. A publication of the American Revolutionary Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut. Chester, Connecticut, 1975.

McNulty, John B. Older than the Nation: The Story of the Hartford Courant. Stonington, Connecticut, 1964.

Smith, J. Eugene. One Hundred Years of Hartford's Courant: From Colonial Times Through the Civil War. Hamden, Connecticut, 1970.

Van Dusen, Albert E. Connecticut. New York, 1961.

* Entry under revision.