Paddi LeShane, Co-Founder & CEO

This is not just a media story. It is a governance story, a civic culture story, and increasingly an economic one.

Strong communities depend on reliable information. When local journalism erodes, fewer residents attend public meetings, municipal accountability weakens, narrow perspectives become “News” and misinformation fills the vacuum. Businesses lose an important platform for visibility and economic development efforts lose a key storyteller.

Connecticut still benefits from respected news institutions such as The Hartford Courant, Hearst Connecticut Media Group, Connecticut Public, and nonprofit digital outlets like The Connecticut Mirror and CT News Junkie. Digital-first publications such as New Haven Independent, CT Insider, and Connecticut Examiner have also stepped forward to cover communities and state government.

But the ecosystem today is far smaller than it once was. Connecticut now has roughly 50 daily and weekly newspapers, down from about 120 in 2004. Even where publications remain, newsroom staffing has shrunk dramatically.

At the same time, the traditional business model that sustained journalism for decades has largely collapsed. Advertising migrated to large digital platforms, while consumer habits changed just as quickly. Today fewer than one in six Americans pays for local news through subscriptions, memberships, or donations.

The result is fewer reporters covering more communities from afar— and fewer young journalists entering the profession just as veteran reporters retire and take decades of institutional knowledge with them.

One practical response is before the 2026 CT Legislature - the creation of a statewide journalism fellowship program that places early-career reporters in local newsrooms and underserved communities. Fellowships could strengthen coverage of municipal government, housing, education, and local business while rebuilding the professional pathway into journalism.

Programs like this could also partner with institutions committed to strengthening civic leadership. The Governor M. Jodi Rell Center for Public Service at the University of Hartford promotes civility in elected office and thoughtful public dialogue — goals that depend on an informed public and a strong press.

If we talk about infrastructure, we often mean roads and bridges. But civic infrastructure matters just as much.

Journalism fellowships will not restore the news industry to what it once was, but they can help rebuild something essential: the next generation of reporters who document the decisions shaping our towns, our state government, and our shared civic life.

As legendary broadcaster Walter Cronkite once said, “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.” Doesn’t it make sense that if Connecticut wants to protect the health of its civic future, helping to cultivate the journalists who sustain that freedom is a place worth starting?

Dan Tapper, Senior Director



Dan Haar is a columnist and senior editor at Hearst Connecticut Media Group, writing about the intersection of business, public policy, and politics and how the issues affect the people of Connecticut.

You are a true veteran of Connecticut’s press corps. How long have you been reporting and writing columns, and what makes it a job you still love to do?

The job of column-writing never has time to get old because everything about it is new with each new column. Curiosity and engagement with passionate people drive my energy level, which remains high. I started my career at the Hartford Courant as a photographer while still in college and joined the paper full-time in 1981. In 1987 I switched to writing and four years later I began a weekly feature column, Business East, on business east of the river. I’ve been a full-time news opinion columnist in business and politics since 2001, a week before 9/11, with the exception of several years as a department manager. I joined Hearst Connecticut Media in 2017. 

How does the job compare to when you first began? What are some of the major ways it has changed, but also, are there parts of the job that have stayed the same over the years?

I’m at heart a storyteller with an analytical bent. My columns bring perspective at best, not so much a persuasive rant although there’s some of that. The basic picture doesn’t change over time; we either tell a story from 40,000 feet or we pick a small detail to describe the whole. What has changed is the value of opinion. In 2001, the views of a person lucky enough to write opinion for the state’s largest news outlet still mattered. A short few years later, and certainly now, my opinions are just one more tally in the cacophony of social media, Substack and on and on. The world doesn’t care whether Dan Haar or any other columnist favors this or that side of a public debate. What matters, what I bring, is my ability to combine a point of view, a persuasive voice and a narrative to news that I’m reporting, often before anyone else. I have little use for the old style of columnist who reads the papers or just lives his or her life and weighs in with a didactic column that lacks any new reporting. As one editor once said to me, “I could write three of those off-the-top-of-your-head columns a week and still do my full-time job!”

You have covered politics and business for many years and have earned a reputation as one of Connecticut’s most trustworthy sources for news coverage. What are the columns and/or stories that get you the most excited? What do you like writing the best?

I like a wide variety. Over the last 18 months, I wrote a couple of long pieces about troubling cases involving the state Department of Children and Families, not a typical topic for me over the years. Any time I can capture the power of a person putting it all on the line for a business idea, whether with success or failure, that’s a good day of work – all the better if it contains a twist, a surprise. The live auction of machinery at a forging company, where I discovered the buyers were selling to Asian manufacturers – a last punctuation of declining American might – brought a lot of satisfaction. In a fairly painstaking analysis, I showed that Malloy cut state agency spending by 4 percent in real dollars over his eight years, compared with an increase of 32 percent in the prior eight years of Rowland/Rell. That surprised a lot of people. I defined and named “Connecticut’s lost decade” from 2010 to 2020 with prescriptions on how to avoid a repeat. That one was a bit preachy but I do like the big picture.

We’ve talked a lot about the difference between getting a story first and getting a story right. Often times these days, when anyone with a social media feed or a cellphone can act like a reporter, there can be a rush to get information out there first and fact-check later. What can you speak about the difference between “getting it first” and “getting it right?”

We of course, need to have our facts 100 percent right, and we need to give both sides a fair shake. I think we in the business overstate the importance of “getting it first,” especially in the work I do. It depends on the story. Some news has value in how we all write it, whether it’s Paz or Ginny or Keating or Ed Mahony. Other news is worthless once someone else reports it. Any responsible journalist will take the time to get it right. The tougher issue is, how long do we need to futz around with a story before pushing the button once we’re basically done? That’s a constant debate in newsrooms, and it’s always case-by-case. I remember breaking the news that Aetna sold a big chunk of itself to ING (now Voya), and we had it in a screaming headline as the papers left the building at 11:30 at night, ahead of the announcement the next morning. AP would send someone every night to pick up the first editions, but they didn’t come that night. It was raining. We were crestfallen. Still first, but not credited by the wires. Back then if you made an error or got beat on a story, you had to live with it for a whole 24 hours. Now we scramble in real time.

Finally, a question on the public relations side. Like many reporters, you get pitched a lot by PR people. What makes a good pitch to you? Conversely, what are the kinds of pitches you don’t like getting? How would you advise PR professionals on the best way to get you interested in a story they are pitching?

We’re always looking for a story with some weird twist, or a conflict, or a parable; any kind of surprise. The threshold is so much higher now because we have a small fraction of the staff. Great stories go unwritten, especially in local and state business. We can’t use anniversaries and sales milestones and stuff like that. On the real estate development and land use side, for example, we at Hearst have maybe a half-dozen people covering the whole state – and we are five times bigger than any other media outlet. So the pitch needs to be unique and strong. A lot depends on relationships and how well-connected the PR person is, so we can negotiate. I’ve known some folks like Dan Tapper and Andrea Obston for decades, which matters. The all-time greatest was Gene Sheehan, may he rest in peace. He was working the long game for clients, which sometimes meant telling me stuff that would have made the clients nervous, to say the least. Gene could talk with anyone about anything and he really, really cared about the news and the community.

Brian Flaherty, Executive Vice President

You’ve seen them:



• “I’m shocked and dismayed that this far-reaching initiative was sidetracked.”

• We are extremely pleased to leverage this effective and efficient initiative to advance meaningful collaboration across stakeholders.”

• Anything that begins with “Quite frankly,” “First and foremost,” or “To be honest.” [Note: Always be honest.]

Technically grammatical. Completely unusable.

A good quote should sound like something a person might actually say if you were speaking with them or handed them a microphone. It has to have a voice. It has to make a point. Ideally, it has to show a little bit of the speaker’s personality.

Reporters rely on quotes for color and perspective. They want a sentence that adds something beyond the facts already in the story. When a quote simply restates the headline using more adjectives, it rarely survives the editing process.

One simple test helps: Read the quote out loud. First, on your own. Then to a colleague.

If you stumble halfway through, if your colleague laughs at you, or if the quote sounds like it was written by a committee in a conference room, it probably needs another pass.

Strong quotes tend to be shorter, clearer, and a bit more conversational. They often include a human element: Why an idea matters, who it will help, or what the speaker hopes to see happen next.

Facts tell the story. Quotes give it a voice.

The best quotes are simple, spoken language that captures a big idea in one breath.



And in communications, the more human that voice sounds, the better chance it has of being heard.

Randi Sussman, Senior Manager, Integrated Communications

As we’ve been building our company's LinkedIn page, we’ve experimented with different types of posts—from thought leadership and fun observances to our newsletter On Message, poll questions, and even some slightly more personal posts. Over time, we’ve seen that followers respond most to posts that showcase our staff, company milestones, and celebrations, though thought leadership and lighter, fun posts also get noticed.

Posting regularly helps build our brand credibility and visibility in the industry, but it’s just as important to make the content worthy of being shared.

Being on LinkedIn as a company is no longer just about job seekers and recruiters; it’s about your professional brand and part of a broader business strategy. At Sullivan & LeShane PR, we’ve seen how posting consistently can make a difference. Our company's LinkedIn page has grown by 30% since we began posting more regularly, just under a year ago, proving that this method works. Slow and steady, we are gaining followers and feel we are making an impact in the public relations market in Connecticut by sharing our insights into the industry and beyond.

If you don’t yet follow the Sullivan & LeShane PR LinkedIn page, now is the perfect time to join the conversation: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sullivanleshanepublicrelations.