Type Daily newspaper Owner(s) Hearst Corporation Founded 1883 | Format Broadsheet Editor Barbara Roessner | |
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Staff writers Dennis Tidrick, Manager of Technology | ||
The Connecticut Post is a daily newspaper located in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It serves Fairfield County and the Lower Naugatuck Valley. Municipalities in the Post's circulation area include Ansonia, Bridgeport, Darien, Derby, Easton, Fairfield, Milford, Monroe, New Canaan, Orange, Oxford, Redding, Ridgefield, Seymour, Shelton, Stratford, Trumbull, Weston, Westport and Wilton. The newspaper is owned and operated by the Hearst Corporation, a multinational corporate media conglomerate with $4 billion in revenues. The Connecticut Post also gained revenue by offering classified advertising for job hunters with very minimal regulation and other separate listings for products and services.
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The Post
The paper has a weekday circulation of 53,866, a Saturday circulation of 41,768, and a Sunday circulation of 80,840, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, behind the Hartford Courant (264,539) and the New Haven Register (89,022). The paper competes directly with the Register in Stratford, Milford, and portions of the Lower Naugatuck Valley.
The publisher is Robert Laska. The most recent editor, James H. Smith, departed abruptly on June 26, 2008. No reason was given to staff, but Smith later attributed his departure to "mutual agreement." Smith had attempted to take the newspaper in a different direction, stressing slice-of-life style features and enterprise and investigative work while downplaying court/police coverage. In recent years he has avoided layoffs despite economic pressures, opting instead to offer buyouts and drastically cut the freelance budget.
The Post's coverage area presents problems as Bridgeport, Connecticut's largest city, is a poor and mostly minority area, while the surrounding eastern Fairfield County and western New Haven County area is affluent and mostly white. Consequently, while the Post does provide solid coverage of Bridgeport, most of the paper is composed of local stories regarding the surrounding towns.
History
The newspaper was formerly the morning Bridgeport Telegram and evening Bridgeport Post before consolidating into a morning publication. The Bridgeport Telegram ran from at least 1908 to 1929 and again from 1938 to 1990.
The Post was formerly owned by Thomson Corporation, a national newspaper chain. In 2000, Thomson agreed to sell the Post for $205 million to MediaNews Group, based in Denver, Colorado, which also owns newspapers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
On August 8, 2008 the Hearst Corporation acquired the Connecticut Post (Bridgeport) and www.ConnPost.com, including seven non-daily newspapers, from MediaNews Group, Inc., and assumed management control of three additional daily newspapers in Fairfield County, including The Advocate (Stamford), Greenwich Time (Greenwich), and The News-Times (Danbury), which had been managed for Hearst by MediaNews under a management agreement that began in April 2007.
In 2010, the Connecticut Post launched a complete re-design which included a new font and re-designed Connecticut Post header.
Some significant stories the Post has broken include former Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim's bribery scandal and former Bridgeport Mayor John Fabrizi's admission of using cocaine.
In 2008, under Smith's leadership, the Connecticut Post received its first Newspaper of the Year Award from the New England Newspaper Association.
Comedian and actor Richard Belzer, a Bridgeport native, was a paperboy and later a staff reporter for the Post, before pursuing his career as an entertainer.