Employees 'Announce' Imminent Demise Of Courant Community Papers

HARTFORD/TOLLAND COUNTIES, CT — A weekly newspaper that has served north-central Connecticut since the 1940s is apparently headed for the journalistic scrap heap.

Current and former employees were spouting on social media outlets Friday that the Courant Community newspapers, delivered to homes in the region for free, will cease after the Jan. 18 edition.

"FYI, the Courant is shutting down Courant Community after the edition of Jan. 18. So, the last remnants of what was the Reminder are now gone," one posting said.

The "Reminder" is a reference to the 15 editions of Reminder Newspapers, which was started in Vernon by Kenneth Hovland in 1949. In 1948, Hovland and his new bride Carol moved from Iowa to the Rockville section of Vernon, where they started the Reminder together the following year.

The first edition of the weekly paper was printed on Nov. 21, 1949, on a hand-cranked press in the kitchen of their third-floor apartment.

Hovland's old manual typewriter is on display at the Vernon Historical Society.

Over the years, the company grew to include the communities of Colchester, East Hartford, Enfield, Glastonbury, Hebron/Columbia, Jewett City, Killingly/Plainfield, Manchester, Putnam, South Windsor, Stafford, Vernon, Windham/Mansfield, Windsor and Windsor Locks.

One of the Reminder's trademark offerings was a standing reader opinion column known as "Speak Out." Features on local clubs and events and personal classified ads were also pillars of the publications.

Hovland died at 87 in October 2011 (Carol died in May 2010) and, in May 2014, family members sold Reminder Newspapers (officially Reminder Media Inc.) to the Hartford Courant. The Reminder name remained on the mastheads of all editions until Nov. 2015, when the papers were redesigned and renamed "Courant Community." The tagline "powered by Reminder News" remained on the front pages. Existing publications in Manchester and Enfield called "Courant Extra" were absorbed into the new-look publications.

The papers were delivered by cars full of papers and staff members who tossed them onto lawns and driveways.

On Friday, 74 years after Hovland pounded out those first stories on that manual typewriter, the apparent demise was not sitting well with Reminder alumni.

"They are an insult to what we produced," one social media post proclaimed. "I think that the town Facebook pages have become uncensored Speak Out for the most part. We published a pretty good product for a while."

Added another, "They were an insult to those of us who worked there. So, it's done."

Calls to several extensions at Courant Community were not answered Friday, and an email to newsroom management was not immediately returned. A confused customer service representative said he had no notice of the newspaper ceasing circulation.