That old Hartford Courant ain't what she used to be

Today brings into the world the first weekday edition of the newly revamped Hartford Courant. And, as suspected, things don't look good for the old news factory.

Gone are the five or six sections you'd expect to find folded together. Now only three remain and everything is crammed within these last men standing. You still have section A, the "news" section, which also houses all business stories (though none were found in today's edition). You still have the "sports" section (which, I assume, is probably the most read section of the paper). Things actually seem pretty status quo in this area. And, in today's paper, there is the new "CTLIVING" section, which stuffs everything from comics to classifieds to obits and weather into one awkward melange of newsprint.

But, condensed format aside, there are other changes in store for loyal readers. Along with the shrinking sections, Courant-philes, if today's edition is an indicator of things to come, should expect shrinking news coverage.

Take today's front page as an example. Actual news, meaning blocks of text anchored to a headline, on this page take up roughly a rectangular space of 8" length x 6.75" height. In comparison, the front page illustration of Senator Dodd that accompanies the main article takes up 8" x 6" of space. So, on a front page that's 11.5" x 23", you have about the same amount of article news text as you do illustration.

It gets worse.

Of the 14 pages in section A, 6 devote less than 16% of their space to news. Page A6, the most egregious offender, contains only a single article that takes up 5" x 3 1/8" of space. That's about 6% of the overall area of the page.

If you're an ad junky, then I suspect the new Courant will rock your socks off.

Of course, I'm not counting headlines or margins in these calculations, but when your state's newspaper has their "news" section reduced to having multiple pages dominated by advertisements, I think one feels it may be time to raise the white flag.

An article written by editor Barbara Roessner on the back page of section A, titled "Welcome to the new Courant," tries to reassure us readers that these changes are good. "We are historic and modern . . . We are prestigious and provocative" Roessner writes. But, by becoming "modern," the Courant seems to have lost the idea of what a newspaper is supposed to be. Their "bolder, modern new look" is nothing more than an expansion of advertising and a reduction of actual news.

It is a sad day for the nation's oldest continuously published newspaper.

Perhaps they can start calling themselves an adpaper. It would be a bit more accurate.

An honor the Courant touts on the front page is that it is read by 800,000 Connecticut residents every week. After today, sadly, I think that number will drop.