Bringing You Branford's News

In answer to our last week, both and came up with correct answers: the Branford Gleaner and the Branford News were both founded in 1878. The latter was a short-lived paper, lasting only six months, while the Gleaner was printed for two years, without a regular schedule, before it closed its office doors. (Pete mentions that it merged with the Shoreline Times, according to History of New Haven County, but I suspect the modern Shoreline Times is not the same as the one mentioned in that book.)

In 1900, a regular newspaper operated in Branford for several years: the Branford Opinion.  posted a scan from the 1913 Branford City Directory for that paper in .

The Branford Review launched in 1928 and was the main newspaper of Branford for eighty years. Meyer Leshine purchased a printing press in 1927, and the original paper sold for five cents per copy. Rhoda Loeb, Leshine's daughter, recalled in an article for the New Haven Independent that she grew up working on the paper. In September 2008, the Review changed locations from its Shoreline offices to the New Haven offices of the New Haven Register, whose parent company (the Journal Register Co.) owned the Branford Review and several other local papers. At the time, the executive editor of the weekly papers, Erik Hesselberg, assured readers that he planned for the local papers to continue publication. By December, however, The Day reported that Journal Register Co. "appears to have closed Branford Review" and several other local weeklies. And though in January 2009, a buyer came forward to save several weeklies, Branford Review was not among those revived. (Thanks to Barb Cangiano and Deb Trofatter at the for their help in tracking down information about the Review's last days!)

Along with Branford Patch as an online media source, Branford's local papers include the Sound, which is operated by New London-based The Day; the Shoreline Times, owned by the Journal Register; the Branford Eagle, owned by the New Haven Independent; and the independent news website, the Branford Seven.