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Newspaper box for Fairfield County Weekly

The Advocate Weekly Newspapers are four free weekly alternative newspapers in Central Connecticut and Western Massachusetts, published by New Mass. Media Inc., a subsidiary of Chicago-based Tribune Company.

The company was founded in 1973 by Geoffrey Robinson and Edward Matys, then copy editors at the Hartford Courant. Robinson, a native of New Haven, worked as Wire Service Editor of the daily Lorain (OH) Journal after his graduation from Yale University in 1971. Matys had worked in editorial positions at several Massachusetts and Connecticut newspapers.

The Valley Advocate started publication as a bi-weekly in September 1973 from small basement offices in Amherst, Mass.. In September 1974, Valley Advocate publication went weekly and Robinson and Matys opened offices in Hartford and started publication of the Hartford Advocate. A year later, in September 1975, the pair began publishing the weekly New Haven Advocate and in 1978 started publication of the Fairfield County Advocate (subsequently renamed Fairfield County Weekly to avoid confusion with the neighboring and unrelated Stamford (CT) Advocate).

In December 2007, Tribune announced it would sell The Valley Advocate, its only Massachusetts publication, to Newspapers of New England.

Advocate weeklies offer investigative journalism, national, state and local political coverage, commentary, and arts features and criticism, mostly from a liberal or countercultural point of view. They share some editorial content, but each has regionally focused news and opinion pieces, restaurant reviews, event listings, and advertisements. The newspapers have annual "Best Of" write-in contests, and subsequent issues that feature the winning businesses.

The Advocates accept a wider variety of advertisements than mainstream newspapers, including ads for strip clubs, erotic massage services, adult book and video stores, etc., which columnists and readers have argued conflict with the newspapers' avowed feminism.

New Mass. Media was privately owned until 1999, when its owners, including founding publisher Geoffrey Robinson, sold the company to the Hartford Courant for an undisclosed sum. A year later, Courant parent company Times-Mirror was bought by Tribune Company.

The New Haven Advocate

The New Haven Advocate is published in New Haven, Connecticut. Circulation is about 47,500 with an actual readership of about 118,000. As of 2006, the Advocate's editor is former New Haven Register reporter Andy Bromage, and the publisher is Josh Mamis.

The Hartford Advocate

The Hartford Advocate is published in Hartford, Connecticut and has a circulation of about 55,000. The managing editor is John Adamian and the publisher is Joshua Mamis.

The Hartford Advocate was founded in 1974 by Geoffrey Robinson and Edward Matys to fill a void in investigative and beat reporting in the capital city of Connecticut. For example, the daily Hartford Courant, where Robinson and Matys had previously worked, did not routinely cover one of the city's largest industries, insurance. The founding editors including managing editor Dick Polman, recruited from the New London Day, and city editor Bruce Kauffman, from the Courant.

Gail Collins reported on state government and politics; she is now editorial page editor at The New York Times. Another early reporter was David Lieberman, who was later an editorial writer for the Courant and covered the media business for USA Today.

Polman left the Advocate after some five years to become a columnist at the Courant and later joined The Philadelphia Inquirer as national political correspondent. He also taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Kauffman later worked for CNN, taught at Emerson College in Boston, Morehouse College in Atlanta and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He also worked for the North County Times, one of two daily newspapers in San Diego County, California.

In a history of the alternative media, "A Trumpet to Arms," author David Armstrong described the Advocate as a bastion for the "new muckrakers." The author explored the paper's examination of the behind-the-scenes power exercised by the corporate elite in Hartford. Kauffman had reported that top banks and insurance companies, including Travelers, were funneling the bulk of city pension fund money into companies that propped up the apartheid regime in South Africa. The city of Hartford would end up divesting the South Africa-related investments.

The Advocate was sold in 1999 to the daily Hartford Courant. The forward of Polman's book, "Dateline: Connecticut," notes that he was denied permission by New Mass Media Inc. to include samples from "Subject to Change," the column he wrote weekly for the Hartford Advocate.

The Fairfield County Weekly

The Fairfield County Weekly is a published in Bridgeport, Connecticut and distributed throughout Fairfield County with a circulation of about 30,000. The managing editor is Nick Keppler and the Group Publisher is Joshua Mamis.

Valley Advocate

Advocate Weekly Newspapers formerly published the Valley Advocate, a similar alternative weekly, in Easthampton, Massachusetts, covering the greater Springfield area and the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. It began as an independent newspaper in 1973 and was sold in late 2007 to Newspapers of New England, parent of its competitor the Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton, Massachusetts.

References

Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Directory

External links

• Hartford Advocate
• New Haven Advocate
• The Fairfield County Weekly
• New Mass. Media Publishers
• Local Commotion music blog
• Selected Hartford Advocate archive