Hartford Courant editor, publisher to edit N.Y. Daily News
Tribune Publishing is searching for a new editor and publisher to run the Hartford Courant after announcing Friday that Andrew Julien will become executive editor of the New York Daily News, which Tribune also owns.
Julien, 62, who joined the Courant more than 30 years ago as a reporter in Middletown, has been overseeing the Daily News’ editorial department on an interim basis since September.
The Courant reported Friday that Kevin Corrado will run its business operations while Tribune searches for a permanent replacement for Julien.
Corrado is regional publisher for MediaNews Group, whose New York City-based controlling investor Alden Global Capital acquired Tribune earlier this year, making MediaNews the secondlargest newspaper publisher in the United States behind Gannett.
Julien has been editor-in-chief and publisher of the Courant since March 2016 and headed the newsroom for more than three years before that.
“I am honored, humbled and thrilled,” said Julien, who was born and raised in New York City, in comments reported by both the Daily News and the Courant.
“While I am excited about this new opportunity, this is a bittersweet moment,” Julien told the Courant. “I’ve been at the Courant more than 30 years and have been honored to be part of an amazing team that led transformation into the digital world and covered the 9/11 terror attacks, the Sandy Hook massacre and — most recently — the coronavirus pandemic.”
In its 258th year of operation, the Courant is the oldest continually published newspaper in the United States, one of eight dailies nationally under Tribune Publishing, which includes the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun. In Tribune’s final full fiscal year as a publicly traded company before the Alden sale, the company reported a $31.5 million loss as operating revenue dropped 21 percent to $746 million.
After outsourcing its printing operation last year, the Courant exited its newsroom on Broad Street near the state Capitol during the coronaviris pandemic. The building, owned by a different company since a 2014 public stock offering, has been listed for sale since mid-October, with a total of nearly 300,000 square feet of space. WTIC-TV Fox 61, formerly a sister company to the Courant, occupies the building.
Tribune closed the lower Manhattan newsroom of the New York Daily News at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the newspaper now listing its main address in Oyster Bay on Long Island.
In its annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission this year, Tribune reported a 30 percent decline in its total headcount in 2020.
A guild formed by nearly 50 Courant newsroom employees has been outspoken in recent years in its criticism of Alden Global Capital, along with other Tribune newsrooms as reported in October by The Atlantic.
“We wish Andrew well in his new role in New York,” the Hartford Courant Guild stated in a Twitter post. “We hope and expect the company will move quickly to hire an editor who sees local news as vital to the health of our community.”