Norwich Bulletin Archive

In 1910, the Norwich Bulletin advertised that it had the largest circulation of any paper in eastern Connecticut and that its readers could be found in “forty-nine towns, one hundred and sixty-five postal districts, and forty-one Rural Free Delivery District routes.”  A subscription base of around 7,000, the editors claimed, meant that the Bulletin had nearly 40,000 readers a day.  A Republican newspaper launched in 1895 during the Progressive Era, the Bulletin overtly courted its two most natural constituencies: the small towns, villages, and rural areas of the eastern part of Connecticut and adjacent Rhode Island, and the banking, industrial, and commercial movers and shakers based in the town of Norwich itself.   

The editor of the Norwich Bulletin summarized well the paper’s dual missions.  First, the Bulletin would “spare no expense” in the effort to “cover its field” by maintaining 80 regular correspondents in the small centers of the eastern part of Connecticut.  Second, the paper would “build and boom” the banking, commercial and industrial center of Norwich.  Correspondents from the small towns sent in short reports on local events, social activities, and family news.  The feature writer of “A Farmer Speaks to Farmers” commiserated with the beleaguered agriculturalists of the rural areas.  At the same time, the Bulletin appears to have been the trusted aggregator of annual reports from the financial institutions, cotton and woolen mills, builders, and arms manufacturers whose owners formed the economic elite of Norwich and nurtured many of the important Republican politicians who operated in state and local government.  Each January 1st issue also carried large photo spreads of industrial, institutional, and commercial buildings completed within the preceding calendar year.  As Norwich was historically a center for New England trade, the Bulletin, in addition, published Atlantic maritime news.  The Bulletin’s full Associated Press service was mentioned in the publisher’s statement in 1910 as a source of pride.

The masthead featured a logo that traced the paper’s lineage to 1791, when Ebenezer Bushnell founded the Weekly Register (1791-1795).  A new owner, Thomas Hubbard, changed the name to the Chelsea Courier (1796-1798), and then over subsequent decades and changes of ownership, it appeared as the Courier (1798-1809), the Norwich Courier (1809-1845), the Norwich Weekly Courier (1845-1859), the Norwich Weekly Courier (1860-?), the Norwich Courier (?-1927), and other titles.  In 1858, the Courier was purchased by a printing firm called Manning, Perry, and Company and these owners attempted to publish an evening paper, the Norwich Daily Courier (1858-1859).  Soon Homer Bliss and Issac Bromley joined Manning’s firm. They decided that a morning paper would be more successful than an evening daily, and the Norwich Morning Bulletin (1858-1895) was born. 

In 1863, a group of prominent businessmen said to be led by the cotton manufacturer John F. Slater and the banker Lorenzo Blackstone formed the joint stock company known as the Bulletin Company.  In 1895, the company renamed the morning paper and launched it as the Norwich Bulletin (1895-2011). Charles D. Noyes and William H. Oat purchased the Bulletin Company in 1898.  Between the company’s founding and 1922, many important businessmen and Republican Party leaders were associated with it.  These include Noyes, himself a leader of the state party organization, and Henry H. Gallup, a banker and manufacturer who served as Connecticut State Treasurer. The Norwich Bulletin was published until 2011 and a successor newspaper, the Bulletin, continues to this day.