Hartford Courant ditches last pro beat....

I don't completely agree with all of this stuff -- but ask yourself -- if you must choose between doing some things big-time and very well and others via AP or doing a lot of things and most of it half-assed because you are stretched so much -- what would you choose?

 

Now why is that so hard to believe?

 

No offense, but if you think this is a good idea, you've never lived in Connecticut.

The Courant used to be a big-time paper that refused to fall for the notion that Hartford didn't count b/c it was in the middle of NY and Boston. It rewarded the readership. Now it is, for all intents and purposes, no better than a JRC rag.

 

CATS AND DOGS. LIVING TOGETHER. MASS HYSTERIA!

 

We are surrounded by idiots.

 

I guess people may be thinking it's a sign if a "big paper" like The Hartford Courant drops its last pro beat that our industry's in big trouble.

However, your point about using resources in the best possible manner is well taken. Hartford doesn't have a pro sports team so it probably should rely on AP for its pro coverage unless there's a Hartford or Connecticut connection and have a feature writer do something.

It sucks, but that's the reality of the business these days. Cover the hell out of U Conn and have the U Conn beat writer cover the Sun during the summer. And if the NHL puts a team in Hartford (which it will around the same time as pigs start flying), THEN pick up a pro beat.

 

We've known that for eons.

 

I'm not your typical Courant reader because working for a sports Web-site, I get my pro sports there.
As a transplant, I read UConn and my local high school stuff occasionally. I always see what Shawn Corchesne's got. But I get the paper for the other sections and because, damnit, I'll give up my newspaper subscription when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
So, I won't really miss the cuts to the pro beats in the Courant, but the rest of the paper has headed south with sports these past two years.
And I would never subscribe to the Times or Journal as my only newspapers. Unless they start covering the hell out of Hartford and Litchfield counties.

 

The most amazing thing is not that the Courant is out of covering pro sports; it's that the nation's oldest newspaper is down to a writing staff of 10.

 

i may have read it wrong, but I think they're even down to a staff of 10...editors included (though, presumably, not including copy editors)

 

I understand they're at 19... 10 writers and nine (not sure if that includes Otterbein) on the editing side. I may have those numbers flip-flopped... that was (pretty reliable) third-hand info.

 

"Beating" the others isn't something that happens regularly, even among the NYC papers. Not on legit big stories. There are (were) too many good reporters working those beats for everyone else to miss something big very often. The standard that I think applied for papers like Hartford: Is your coverage good enough that your readers don't need a New York or Boston paper to follow a New York or Boston team? In my opinion, yes it was. Some of their writers (and editors) had handled pro beats in larger cities. Off the top of my head, some of the better writers: Greg Garber, Jack O'Connell, Claire Smith, Peter May, the late Alan Greenberg, I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of them. Jon Pessah went from being SE there to SE at Newsday. They talked to me about a layout job in the late 1980s and they were giving people six weeks' pay for a Christmas bonus. They were paying the NYC and Boston writers enough to live in those areas.