New Britain almost lost its newspaper. Now, a new owner’s trying to turn things around, and his progress just might reveal the future of small-town newspapers — in Connecticut and beyond

Each morning at the New Britain Diner, a 24-hour dive sandwiched between McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, the manager lowers the shades against the rising sun and, in blue ink, writes "NEW BRITAIN DINER — DO NOT TAKE!!!" on two copies of the New Britain Herald. The Diner's the kind of place where waitresses know the regulars (and their orders) by name — like Robert (three eggs over-easy), an older man with shortcropped white hair and big, knotty features.

I'm in town to ask people about their newspaper, and it appears I'm sitting in Robert's designated booth. Once we sort that out, he becomes quite friendly. "The Herald's doing good, a lot better than it was," Robert says. "It's more courteous and more caring. People are still getting used to the new front page." I ask him about the Hartford Courant, which rests on the tables of about half of the diner's customers. "I get the Courant, because my wife gets the Courant," he says. He thinks it doesn't devote enough space to New Britain (or, increasingly, to anything else). "I like the Herald better."

Robert and the rest of New Britain are fortunate to have a choice. In November 2008, the Herald's corporate owner decided to close it, the Bristol Press and some smaller weekly papers unless they could find a buyer. If you can read this, you can probably recite what's plaguing the newspaper industry: plummeting ad revenue, online competition and some really dumb choices. But most media stories focus on the major players — call it the Courant and Up category — even though there are more than 1,000 daily and 8,000 weekly newspapers in America. Most of them resemble the Herald more than the Courant (which owns the New Haven Advocate), and it's worth checking in on the Herald's progress — especially since, at this point last year, everyone assumed it would die.

As with most stories, it helps to start at the beginning — not all the way to 1880, when the Herald's first issue appeared, but to 1995. That year, the Journal Register Company (JRC), a Pennsylvania-based newspaper chain, which owns the New Haven Register, purchased the Herald and promptly set about running it into the ground.

Even in the 1990s, when it was pulling in profit margins of 35 percent, the JRC pioneered some of the newspaper industry's most ruthless money-saving tactics. You can find stories about JRC bosses peering into cars to verify mileage claims and keeping supply cabinets under a literal lock and key; more recently, in a move that earned the attention of Connecticut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the company paid its executives almost $2 million in "shutdown bonuses" for laying off employees and closing local newspapers while in bankruptcy.

At the Herald, the JRC axed a dozen employees in its first week. It also shifted the Herald's focus. Using its New Jersey papers as a model, the chain pushed reporters to be more sensational, one-sided and aggressive — in a word, more tabloid. Even today, Herald employees happily badmouth the JRC as "abusive" and "out of touch."

It's no surprise that the Herald's circulation, which stood at 33,000 when the JRC took over, dropped to 7,000 by 2008. Still, the Herald was all New Britain had. When the JRC threatened to fold it, more than a dozen local politicians and officials came together and sent letters to 16 media companies, imploring them to buy the endangered JRC papers, even offering them tax breaks, sweetheart loans and other economic incentives.

The Herald's eventual savior never got that letter.

Michael Schroeder's staffers call him "a big bear of a man," a description I can't improve on, and he clearly enjoys telling the story of his last-second bid. On Dec. 18, less than a month before the Herald was to close, Schroeder, a Long Island resident and media lifer, was having breakfast with friends. One of them mentioned a New York Times story on New Britain's desperate search for a buyer and asked Schroeder: "Have you ever thought of doing something like that?"

Schroeder says he hadn't, but, by Dec. 29, he found himself meeting with New Britain's mayor and some Herald higher-ups. It was the first time Schroeder had set foot in New Britain, and, along with a silent partner (who's not in the newspaper business), he decided to buy the Herald, the Bristol Press and three weeklies. Schroeder says his passion for journalism and his belief in small towns pushed him to buy the papers. "If you're here to make money," he says, "you're not a very good businessman."

On Jan. 5, Schroeder started his new job. His first task was to order comics for the next Sunday's paper. No one had thought they'd need them.

Whadda ya got on the rape thing?"

"No one knows how old the rapist is. The rapee is 31. So I can get you that. But let's not forget the paintball story."

"We'll put it in there. Oh, and Lisa, one more thing — I don't think we should run the sex offenders series on Thanksgiving week."

"I guess no one shares my sense of humor."

If you've never been in a newsroom, it takes a while to get used to the casual language that lies behind the page, whether it's for a rape in the back of a Civic or for two teenagers sniping at the mailman with a paintball gun.

Court reporter Lisa Backus has been at the Herald for a decade, and she chuckles as she walks away from James Smith — the man Schroeder brought in to be the executive editor of both the Herald and the Press.

Tall and angular, with both aspects set off by his frequent gestures, Smith is the consummate Connecticut newsman. In 1971, he started his career covering New Britain and Bristol for the Courant. Now, after stints at eight different Connecticut papers, he's back where he started, but his passion for the news remains. At one point in our interview, several gunshots go off — Smith leaps up, a twinkle in his eye, and heads for the window.

"Oh, Veterans Day," he says, with a big laugh.

Smith's desk sits in the corner of a wide, open space that serves as the Herald's newsroom. For more than 50 years, the Herald had its own building, a large brick structure with 70,000 square feet, a huge "THE HERALD" sign, and a printing press in the basement. The press no longer works — the JRC cannibalized it for its other papers — and the old building became far too big for the Herald's staff. So, this summer, Schroeder moved them to the fourth floor of a downtown office building, where they're identified only by a small sign masking-taped to the lobby window. There's less space — the Herald's archives didn't make the move — but at least the newsroom buzzes again.

Schroeder's made other changes. They range from the paper's support (moving customer service back to New Britain) to its finances (turning down the thermostat) to its staff (replacing the JRC's editor, publisher and city hall reporter). But the most important ones center on its content. Schroeder and Smith admit that, under JRC control, the Herald saw an erosion of both authority and impact. "A local newspaper has to reflect its community," Smith says. "Readers are smart, and if they look at the paper and the city's distorted, they know that."

Schroeder and Smith kept the JRC's tabloid format (the same magazine-like layout as the Advocate), but brought text back on the front page. More importantly, they swapped out the tabloid mentality for one of guarded optimism. Every day, the paper now includes a local, staff-written editorial and "Focus on X," a rotating feature on the many communities surrounding New Britain. But Smith says his reporters also look for "people stories." As Schroeder explains, "There are a lot of good people here. You'll always see one — at least one — story in the Herald of someone really making this into a city that's not just livable, but hopeful." After a few months, Schroeder changed the paper's name — from The Herald back to the New Britain Herald — and resurrected its original masthead. Schroeder says he saved these changes until they actually symbolized something. "I'm proud of the papers now."

But are its readers?

In addition to the New Britain Diner, I visited downtown shops and restaurants, the library, the Police Department and City Hall, talking to about 50 people in all.

At least seven claim to have worked for the Herald as a paperboy or -girl — and this gets at the way a local paper can permeate its community. Still, I find a pretty equal split between Courant and Herald loyalists, though there's a lot more complaining about the Courant.

I ask what the new Herald does well. People praise the recent election coverage. A Newington couple appreciates the earlier 5 a.m. delivery — a Schroeder innovation — and several people comment on his presence in the community (he recently joined the symphony board). I also ask what the Herald can do better. The collective wish-list matches what Schroeder and Smith are already doing: more local news with a more positive focus.

It's no surprise everyone's on board with more local coverage, but people seem to say this reflexively. I can't get any specificity — more local what? One man complains "the first three pages used to be New Britain only." Well, the first four pages of every post-Schroeder issue I examined (and sometimes more) were devoted to New Britain. The most common request is for more local sports, even though each issue of the Herald devotes at least 10 pages to, in Schroeder's words, "covering local sports like they're the pros."

Everyone also recalls the Herald's brush with death. Now that it's been saved, though, people don't really seem passionate about the paper — maybe "appreciative" is a better word. One woman can name off reporters who've been laid off by the Courant in the past year; another man remembers when the Courant had a New Britain bureau of four reporters. But they make up a vocal minority, and I hear a lot of comments like "The Herald's better than nothing" and "I'm just glad it did stay."

New Britain has a population of around 70,000, but feels smaller. Even at this size, it struggles with urban problems like crime, drugs and homelessness. Downtown has the form of a picture postcard, but not the content. There are cute storefronts and walkable streets, but instead of bistros and fashion boutiques, you'll find Jimmy's Smoke Shop and Ride the Needle Tattoo. The city's seen a slow decline in its manufacturing base — it has an industrial museum but little industry — and a rapid splintering of its culture. In addition to an insular Polish community, which boasts three Polish-language newspapers of its own, there's a growing Latino population. New Britain's schools now accommodate more than 50 languages.

It all adds up to some very specific challenges, and they impact the Herald as much as anything else. The JRC hasn't tried to sell its other small Connecticut dailies — the Torrington Register-Citizen (with a circulation of around 8,000) and The Middletown Press (6,000) — because they're still profitable. But things are clearly different in New Britain.

This raises an important point: For papers in the Herald's weight class, local economic and demographic trends can overpower the industry's preferred solutions. Media pundits and big-picturers point to flashy redesigns, the branding of reporters and "platform agnosticism" (all of which you can see at work in the Courant), but let's take the most familiar one — beefing up a paper's online presence.

When he first arrived, Schroeder constantly talked up the Herald's bright Internet future. In his very first meeting with the staff, he promised a "substantially different" Web site and stressed the importance of becoming a "multimedia company." In March, Schroeder told Connecticut public radio that the Herald's site would go behind a subscription-driven pay wall "in about a month." In early November, he told me there'd be a pay wall "within two weeks."

But Schroeder hasn't acted on any of this. The Herald's Web site has stayed largely the same, with the same creaky infrastructure and the same unfocused and often neglected blogs. It still lists the Herald's old address, which meant Google Maps and I got lost on our first day in New Britain.

It's hard to blame Schroeder for this disconnect. When I ask him about it, he says only: "We know we need to get better." But it seems clear that, faced with tight schedules and limited resources, he's shifted his strategy to fit the local reality. In other words, for now, at least, the online silver bullet won't pay off in New Britain — not only in ads, but in readers. New Britain's most popular independent political blog, "Frank Smith Says New Britain," averages about 500 hits per day; other local blogs get fewer than 100 per week.

This leaves Schroeder and the Herald in a bit of a bind. Local reporting is expensive — a fact underscored by the Courant's recent plagiarism flap with the Herald, the Press, and other local papers. The Courant rewrote small-time stories — for example, the vandalizing of an annual harvest festival — that, while important to individual communities, can't justify a reporter in a cost-benefit analysis. (Both Schroeder and Smith seem pretty conciliatory about this matter and say they don't plan to follow the Manchester Journal-Inquirer, which recently filed a $1.6 million lawsuit against the Courant.)

Stories like these — along with stuff like the day-to-day watchdogging of New Britain's efforts to jumpstart its downtown with a new $50 million police station and several other major projects — cost time, money and effort. The Herald wants to cover it all, but lacks options for improving its bottom line. The Courant has more alternatives, but a smaller ground force and a weaker commitment. (And let's not overstate the Courant's online prowess: Its Web site automatically files every New Britain story under "United Kingdom.")

So it might come down to, not the quality of the product, but the life of the town. While New Britain and the Herald continue to limp along, industry reports actually suggest that newspapers with circulations under 15,000 enjoy a (relatively) healthier outlook. But that doesn't mean smaller papers can benefit from someone else's hindsight and slap down a metamedia template. More than anything or anyone else, papers like the Herald appear to be captives of their specific situations and locales.

On Nov. 30, just before noon, a white male in a baseball cap robbed the People's Bank that sits across the street from the New Britain Diner. Police arrested the man by 4 p.m., but, even as late as 10 p.m., the Courant's Web site included only a sentence about the robbery and a link to a WTIC story. Since it updates its site only once per day, the Herald had nothing at all.

For New Britain, then, this is local news, and this is the speed at which it is reported. We shouldn't exaggerate or romanticize the Herald and other, similar newspapers. In addition to its online woes, the Herald regularly includes grammatical errors, page jumps to nowhere and clunky writing. At an editorial meeting I sat in on, the biggest issue was how to cover the Miss Bristol and the Miss Southington contests since both fell on Saturday night.

But that's what local news looks like, and sometimes it reminds you of its value. On Dec. 12, police were able to pin two more New Britain robberies on the People's Bank suspect, who was out on bail, when his wife saw his picture in the Herald and turned him back in.

Schroeder can point to some positive signs for the Herald's future. Even after increasing its price from 50 to 75 cents, it's seen a small jump in subscriptions. There are also, according to Schroeder, "more ads now than in a long time." But the paper continues to lose money, and Schroeder won't say how long he's willing to sustain the Herald and its sister papers at a loss. After some pressing, though, he addresses the Herald's longterm viability.

"If we don't get a reasonable amount of advertising and a growth or at least a flattening in circulation, then the community doesn't really want the papers."

It's a fair statement, but it's also one that rests completely and comfortably within the parameters of old media — it's less about Search Engine Optimization or a hyperlocal scope than location, location, location.

Craig Fehrman lives in New Haven. His writing has appeared in Salon, Slate's The Big Money and The Christian Science Monitor.

Questions or comments? Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Share this story:
Facebook |Twitter |Digg |Reddit |Stumbleupon

Comments

Add New Search

Write comment
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Website:
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."