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Can You Say, ‘Sell Out’?
Hartford Courant gobbles up Advocate newspapers
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Business New Haven
4/19/1999
By: BNH
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New Mass Media Inc. of Hatfield, Mass., parent company of the New Haven Advocate, has been sold to a subsidiary of the Hartford Courant.
Founded in 1973 as publishers of the western Massachusetts-based Valley Advocate, New Mass Media now publishes five weekly newspapers in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. The company started the New Haven Advocate in 1975.
The weeklies were sold to a Courant subsidiary known as the Courant Specialty Products Co. The Courant is owned by Los Angeles-based giant Times-Mirror Co.
In addition to their weekly frequency, the Advocate papers have differentiated themselves from the daily newspapers in their markets by their left-leaning political coverage and appeal to younger audiences than most dailies attract.
With combined annual revenues of about $15 million, however, the Advocate papers are profitable, in part because they accept ads some other newspapers shun, including ads for sex-related services.
Despite the dissonance between the weeklies and the establishment Hartford daily, Courant officials say they will operate the weeklies independently and foresee no immediate changes in editorial or advertising focus.
“The Courant is in a race with the Journal-Register Co. [publishers of the New Haven Register] to buy up the whole state,” said New Haven Advocate Associate Editor Paul Bass. “Now they have the whole I-91/I-95 corridor. That's a powerful competitive advantage.”
Even so, many observers in the media warn than increasing concentration of media ownership holds perils for both readers and advertisers.
“Whenever you have fewer and fewer entities gobbling up more and more media properties, diversity of views and opinions will eventually suffer,” said Mitchell Young, publisher of Business New Haven and a co-founder of the Hartford, New Haven and Fairfield County Advocate papers. “At the end of the day however, this marriage of alternative and corporate journalism can't survive, something will give”.
(Editor's note: Both Young and BNH Editor Michael Bingham were formerly associated with New Mass Media. Young was a co-principal of the company from 1973-90, Bingham was editor and associate publisher of the New Haven Advocate from 1987 to 1991.)
Still, Bass himself is sanguine about the purchase. “The main issue is not whether we'll still be able to say snotty things about the Hartford Courant. The main issue is whether a conventional daily newspaper chain can run a true alternative newspaper.”
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