The Hartford Courant

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The July 27, 2005 front page of the Hartford Courant
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet

Owner	Tribune Company
Publisher	Stephen D. Carver
Founded	1764 (as The Connecticut Courant)
Headquarters	285 Broad St Hartford, CT 06115 United States
Circulation	184,254Daily 272,918 Sunday^[1]

Website: www.courant.com

The Hartford Courant is Connecticut's largest daily newspaper, and is a morning newspaper for most of the state north of New Haven and east of Waterbury. Its headquarters on Broad Street are a short walk from the state capitol, and it reports regional news with a chain of bureaus in smaller cities and a series of local editions.

The Connecticut Courant began as a weekly on October 29, 1764. The word "courant" was a popular name for English-language newspapers, borrowed from the Dutch. The daily Hartford Courant traces its existence back to the weekly, thereby claiming the title "America's oldest continuously published newspaper" and adopting as its slogan, "Older than the nation." The New Hampshire Gazette, which started publication in 1756, has a legitimate claim to the title of oldest paper in the nation, and is a bi-weekly, while the Courant has not missed a single week since October 29, 1764.

The Courant was purchased in 1979 by Times Mirror, the Los Angeles Times' parent company. The first years of out-of-town ownership were described by a former Courant reporter in a book titled Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted America's Oldest Newspaper. [1] One criticism was that the new owners were more interested in awards, and less interested in traditional Courant devotion to exhaustive (or exhausting) coverage of local news.

The new Courant won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for digging into problems with the Hubble Space Telescope (a Connecticut company was involved in the construction), and it won a 1999 Pulitzer Prize in the Breaking News category for coverage of a 1998 murder-suicide that took five lives at Connecticut Lottery headquarters.

In 2000, Times Mirror and the Courant became part of the Tribune Company, one of the world's largest media empires. Ironically, along the way the Courant also acquired the Valley Advocate group of "alternative" weeklies started by two disgruntled Courant staff members in 1973.

At its Hartford office, the Courant also sells - amongst other merchandising goods - a beach towel that has the text of the paper's first ever frontpage printed on it.

While the Courant editorially has recently endorsed Republican presidential candidates, its editorial approach to state government has traditionally been liberal and opposed to what it considers short sighted conservatism. Its strong endorsement of former Senator Lowell Weicker was decisive in the 1990 gubernatorial election. It endorsed his Lieutenant Governor Eunice Groark in the 1994 election. After Governor John Rowland abandoned efforts to repeal the state income tax and endorsed state funded redevelopment of downtown Hartford, he received the Courant's endorsement for his re-election bids. The Courant's investigation into his dealings with state contractors was a major force behind his political demise and resignation from office, however. In 2006 the Courant reverted to form by endorsing liberal Democrat John DeStefano for Governor.

Following its traditional stance towards supporting expansive state government, the Courant then strongly endorsed Governor Jodi Rell's 2007 plan to raise the state income tax and exceed the state's constitutional spending cap.

The Courant is the most recent American newspaper to win the Society for News Design's World's Best Designed newspaper award (won in 2005).

In late June 2006, the Tribune Co. announced that Courant publisher Jack W. Davis Jr. would by replaced by year's end by Stephen D. Carver, vice president and general manager of Atlanta, Ga., TV station WATL.

In July 2006 the Courant weighed in on the contentious Connecticut Democratic senate primary by endorsing incumbent Joe Lieberman. The Courant also endorsed his bid in the general election.