• by Tony Silber , Staff Writer, March 29, 2022

Hearst Connecticut Media Group, which owns eight daily papers clustered mostly in the southwestern part of the state, last week announced an expansion of its statewide news coverage and strengthened local journalism in Hartford County.

The company, which publishes the Stamford Advocate, Danbury News-Times, New Haven Register, Norwalk Hour, Greenwich Time, Middletown Press, Torrington Register Citizen and the Connecticut Post (in Bridgeport), as well as 15 weeklies, said it will hire 13 new staff, including 11 journalists, for the expansion, and two advertising sales representatives.

Hearst Connecticut already has 160 journalism jobs in the state, it said in an announcement that was published in a variety of its brands,

The plan is to center the expanded journalism at CTInsider.com, with a mix of statewide stories and local breaking news and investigations in Hartford County and the surrounding areas. A Hartford County reporter is being added, as well as a CTInsider managing editor

CTInsider.com includes top breaking news, UConn sports coverage, plus an aggregation of food, business, investigations, lifestyle, real estate and more from the individual brands. The site features well-known journalists such as the 2019 Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame inductee Ken Dixon, who covers government and politics.

“Our goal is to double down on the quality journalism we produce daily and increase our coverage, including in areas where we see a void of local news reporting in communities across the state,” HCMG Publisher and President Mike DeLuca said in the statement.

The company said it expects to reach nearly 50,000 digital subscriptions by the end of this year — and around 100,000 overall for print-plus-digital. It has seen 31 consecutive months of digital subscription growth since launching a paywall in September 2019.