(Editor’s note: UPDATE This story updates an earlier story that incorrectly stated the Weston Forum, Eastern Courier, and Redding Pilot have been discontinued and consolidated into a new publication, Aspetuck News. The newspapers continue to publish—allbeit with the same content—and the consolidation also impacts their online sites. WestportNow regrets the errors and apologizes to the HAN Network and its readers. For more information, click HERE.)
By James Lomuscio
In another consolidation of local newspapers, Weston, Easton, and Redding readers of those publications are seeing changes in the ways their news is delivered.
While the Weston Forum, the Easton Courier, and the Redding Pilot will continue to be published by Ridgefield-based publisher The HAN Network (formerly Hersam Acorn Newspapers), their online counterparts have been consolidated into what is now called Aspetuck News.
But the consolidation is not just online. The newspapers published Thursday, Jan. 18 also showed the consolidation impacted the newspapers. While each retained their individual banners, the content was identical across the three newspapers.
Martin Hersam, chief executive officer of the company, cited financial reasons.
“The ills facing the newspaper industry are well documented, and the HAN Network’s newspapers, including this newspaper, are not immune,” Hersam said in an editorial to Weston, Easton and Redding readers.
HAN serves 20 communities in Connecticut’s Fairfield and New Haven counties, Lewisboro, New York. and Vermont.
Hersam said the aim is to keep coverage in those communities rather than closing newspapers
“Readers of The Easton Courier, The Redding Pilot and The Weston Forum will continue receive their newspapers every week, as they always have, in mailboxes and on newsstands,” he said.
“The changes involved consolidation of several facets of our operations in those markets, including editorial, production, printing, mailing of newspapers, and distribution of content to the web and our social media platforms.
“Our goal with these changes is to continue to serve these vibrant communities with original, high-quality community journalism. In order to do so we have to manage costs.
“Simply stated, the old model of community newspapering was one in which display advertising accounted for 90 percent of revenue, and 10 percent was generated in paid subscriptions,” Hersam said. “That model’s metamorphosis began in earnest in 2000.”
“The new reality is a precipitous commoditization and redistribution of advertising dollars online, along with the trend in readership that has become accustomed to consuming content online for free,” he added.
In a letter to Weston residents posted on the town’s website, Greg Menti, Weston editor of the new publication, reiterated that the change was required to keep the papers “economically viable in this climate, a hard decision.
“While the front page of the paper may be jarring on any given week, this ultimately represents a positive change for the coverage of news in Weston,” he added.
Menti, who had worked as a reporter on the Weston Forum, said “the amount of Weston specific coverage will continue to increase over the coming weeks.”
At the same time, however, he suggested that many local listings and notes, which he called “minutiae,” would get less attention.
“My new role allows me to spend less time on day-to-day minutiae involved with the Forum and more time on the ground in Weston covering the stories that matter to you,” he said. “A new website, aspetuck.news will feature extensive Weston coverage.”
But such minutiae were the genesis of the Weston Forum, according to the late Patricia Heifetz, who started the newspaper in the basement of her Weston home in 1970.
“Before the Forum there was no community in Weston,” Heifetz said in the mid-1980s.
People would get their local news from flyers, broadsides on the on the town’s iconic Onion Barn or bulletin boards in the town center. They also read the Westport News, which covered Weston.
The Forum remained one of Connecticut’s last locally owned newspapers until Heifetz, struggling to keep it afloat in the 1990s, sold it to Hersam Acorn Newspapers, now HAN.
In 2005, the Forum entered the digital age, as HAN launched a news and information website focusing on Weston.
“Our focus in both print and online continues to be local news; we cover all aspects of Weston life, from town government and school news, to sports coverage, social and community events, business updates and feature stories,” the Forum stated in its “About Us” section on its website.
