Paul Bass File Photo
Charles Kochakian, the editorial voice of the New Haven Register for 36 years, is hanging up his pen-turned-keyboard.
Kochakian (at left in photo with Chamber prez Anthony Rescigno at the 2009 Smilow Cancer Hospital ribbon-cutting) will retire Friday as the daily newspaper’s editorial page editor. The company was eliminating his position.
Kochakian is 68 years old. He started working at the Register in 1976 as a general assignment reporter, then an investigative reporter. He took over the helm as editor of the paper’s conservative-leaning editorial page in 1986 and has served in that role ever since.
The elimination of his position comes amid a broader, ongoing reinvention of the Register in the digital age.
“I’m ready to retire. It’s been great,” Kochakian said Tuesday. “I appreciate the opportunity to have done [the job] as long as I have. The paper’s evolving. Obviously it’s going to continue to change. This is part of the change.” Kochakian said he believes that the 21st-century daily newspaper will have a “continuing need for strong editorials to shape public opinion and encourage people to act in the public’s interest.”
Register Editor Matt DeRienzo said an as-yet-unnamed board of existing editorial employees will write the paper’s editorials “on a rotating basis.”
“We’re still going to have an opinion page. We’re still going to write editorials,” DeRienzo said.
He called Kochakian a “voice of calm,” something “we need more than ever.”
“He’s had an incredible career. He’s someone the entire newsroom has looked up to and learned from,” DeRienzo said. “He has been a steady voice of reason on that editorial page. Even when you disagree with his conclusion, his editorials have been rooted in dispassionate, careful examination of facts.”
A conservative editorial page in a liberal city. One of many reasons the Register was doomed to fail. The current iteration of the Register is so intolerable with its flashing banner ads and miserable layout that I can't bear to read an article, even on those few occasions when they produce an article that might be worth reading. The Register might have a long history and a well-known name, but the Independent now puts it to shame.