City assessor database photo
100 Gando Dr.
The New Haven Register is on the move — to Meriden.
The print daily paper’s newsroom relocated 15 miles north this week to the headquarters of the Meriden Record-Journal, leaving it without an office within New Haven city limits and reflecting a broader newspaper industry trend.
The Register, like most of the legacy print dailies in southern and central Connecticut, is owned by the Hearst chain, which has already consolidated much of the state papers’ operations in a Norwalk office.
Hearst purchased the Meriden daily, a holdout non-chain paper owned by four generations of the White family over 156 years, in December. The company inherited ownership of the Record-Journal office building, which like many American news operations had shrunk considerably this decade, leaving lots of available space.
Hearst had already sold the Register’s former 220,000-square foot plant on Sargent Drive (now a Jordan’s Furniture outlet) in 2014. It moved the New Haven Register editorial and advertising offices to 18,000 square feet of rented space on two floors of a building on Gando Drive right by New Haven’s North Haven border.
Even that space proved far more than needed, especially once the Covid-19 pandemic set in. The Register consolidated its operations to one floor, and in recent years asked news employees to show up in the office three days a week.
The Register moved its editorial offices to the Meriden plant on Monday. Reporters from the New Haven edition are now asked to travel to the Meriden office for work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. So are reporters from the Manchester Journal-Inquirer and Middletown Press, two other Hearst-owned papers without offices in their communities.
Hearst decided on the consolidation after purchasing the Record Journal and Inquirer at the end of 2023, according to Mike DeLuca, publisher of Hearst Connecticut Media Group, which includes the Register and eight other print daily titles as well as weekly papers and Connecticut Magazine. The group has “160+ newsroom employees,” DeLuca said.
The Meriden location made sense for consolidation “as it sits conveniently between” New Haven and Hartford and is a modern building, DeLuca wrote in an email message to the Independent.
On the one hand, the Meriden move means New Haven Register reporters need to travel far from the cities and towns they cover. On the other hand, the reporters get to be around more human beings again at work. Some legacy newspapers eliminated newsrooms altogether, like the Alden Capital equity fund-owned Hartford Courant after selling its Broad Street headquarters in the state’s capital city.
“We expect our reporters to be in their respective communities far more than in the office and nothing has changed in terms of our commitment to great journalism in those communities we serve,” DeLuca stated. “The goal is to provide a great workspace for our employees in a location where they can all work together, share ideas and learn from each other.”
Hearst’s lease at the New Haven Gando Drive building runs out at year’s end. “At that time we will assess our options on renewal,” DeLuca said. For now, Hearst Media Group is using some of the space as a distribution depot.
What on earth is the economic development plan for New Haven aside from homeless shelters, drug addiction centers? This is sad news. The New Haven Register should have a physical presence in this town.