New Haven Independent

Loeb (pictured with her husband John) , a highly respected lawyer, said the journey began at 7 Rose St. when her father Meyer Leshine purchased a newspaper printing press. The year was 1927.

The weekly Branford Review opened its doors a year later and sold for five cents a copy. Rhoda, then a young girl, grew up in the newspaper office. “I did just about everything.”

The town’s local weekly eventually became part of a local chain — which in later years was scooped up, along with the Elm City Weeklies, by Journal Register Co., the now practically bankrupt Pennsylvania-based conglomerate that owns the New Haven Register. That chain has fallen on hard times. The closing down of a shoreline office for the shoreline weeklies is the latest in a series of cost-cutting moves that has seen the company’s workforce shrink and its suburban bureaus close.

“We Plan To Be Around”

Erik Hesselberg is executive editor of the Shore Line and Elm City weeklies as well as the breezy and popular Shore View weekend section that appears Thursday in the New Haven Register. It is now available for free in newsstands in Branford. Some believe it is being groomed to replace the weeklies though it does little in the way of news.

We asked Hesselberg if the Shore View insert, consisting of four sections, will eventually ease the weeklies out.

“We have no desire to do that. We have been around for 150 years, and we plan to be around for another number of years,” he said.

Hesselberg told the Eagle that the primary reason for the move to the Register was to “maximize resources, to bring everyone together from a production standpoint.” In this way his staffs from the Shoreline and the Elm City papers will all be at the Register. The Elm City papers include the Milford Weekly, the Hamden Chronicle, the Stratford Bard, the North Haven Post, the Shelton Weekly, the Orange Bulletin, the Wallingford Voice and the West Haven News.

“It makes sense from a managerial stand point. I can more easily oversee the operation of all the papers. Now I have to drive all over,” he said.

The eight shoreline weeklies, including the Shore Line Times in Guilford, the Clinton Recorder and the East Haven Advertiser, were consolidated under one roof when they were moved from their towns to Guilford about three years ago. They rented a building on High Street.

They are part of the Shore Line Newspapers, which should not be confused with Shore Publishing Company, the publisher of a group of weeklies in the same readership area. These include the Sound in Branford. Shore Publishing will remain in Madison. The Sound and its counterparts are free and come via mail. The Branford Review and its sister weeklies are by subscription.

As far as presence on the shoreline, Hesselberg said his reporters will still be living in their communities and reporting from there. He said he thought the move would benefit readers because reporters will be “out on the streets” and “digging a little deeper” for the news. About 20 members of the Shore Line’s eight weeklies, including 12 members of the editorial department, will now be based in New Haven.

The Branford Review has its own editor, Sally E. Bahner and one reporter, Diana Stricker. Last week it published only 12 pages. But the Review isn’t Bahner’s only job. Mastheads show she is also the editor of the East Haven Advertiser as well as a staff writer for Shore View.

In recent years, once family owned weeklies have been picked up by larger newspaper chains. The Journal-Register company purchased the weeklies about 13 years ago from Capital Cities Inc. Afterwards, the staff dwindled. Before long some stories from the daily paper wound up in the weekly as well. Subscribers to both read the same story twice.

The difference between 13 years ago and now is that newspaper companies across the country, including the Journal Register, face serious financial crisis as advertising shifts to the Internet and staffs are reduced.

Despite the move, Hesselberg said he hopes his weeklies will one day have a physical presence on the shoreline, possibly in Guilford, where a storefront might fit the bill. And while it is not yet official, he acknowledged that the company is looking around.

An Era Ends

It’s all a far cry from the days of the local newspaper in the local town — and the “hot type” printing press.

Rhoda Loeb recalled those days in an interview at her home.

She recalled the enormity of the press itself, a linotype machine that was used to set stories in print. She remembers the constant presence of deadlines and grew up respecting them.

“Thursday came every week,” she said, referring to the office motto describing the weekly push toward publication.

The paper’s office was located in the hub of the Branford. “I was going to be a journalist,” she said. To learn more she went to law school, specifically the Yale Law School at a time when few women gained admission. The year was 1942. Eventually she gave up the idea of journalism and became a lawyer.

She said her father, a Russian Jew who came to American in 1900, started the paper. “He thought the town should have a newspaper to record the events of the day.” Later, her husband, John Loeb, became its editor and its publisher. He held other positions as well, he said, smiling. “I did whatever was needed.”

In an interview, the Loebs said they are deeply disheartened to learn the weeklies will be leaving the shoreline for the first time in more than a century of publishing.

“I think it’s awful,” Rhoda Loeb said. “It is very sad,” her husband echoed. She added: “It’s the shrinking of all newspapers. The Register is in trouble. The Hartford Courant is shrinking. People are reading online.”

During her lifetime in Branford, Rhoda Loeb has become an influential public advocate. She currently serves on the town’s Economic Development Commission. She has played a key role in the growth of Branford Cable Television. She still reads four newspapers a day, in print form.

Her father sold the paper in 1952. Since then the Branford Review, along with other shoreline newspapers, has changed hands several times before coming into the corporate orbit of the Register.

Gil Kelman, who wrote a column for the Branford Review in the past, and before that was the editor of the Wallingford Post, said he knew Leshine as well as a number of Branford Review editors. “They never strayed from the truth, whether it was a selectman’s meeting, the police chief or local judges. Their readers depended on their hometown newspaper to print the truth.

“This era is fast disappearing, and in my opinion, we are not the better for this change,” he said.

“Now the Review is moving to Sargent Drive in New Haven, totally out of the Review’s hometown and out of reach,” Kelman said.

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