New Haven Independent

The New Haven Independent was a weekly newspaper published in New Haven, Connecticut, from 1986 to 1990. Emphasizing local investigative reporting, neighborhood-based journalism and cultural affairs, the Independent attracted national attention for innovative civic journalism, presaging the growth of hyperlocal and nonprofit news in the years that followed. In 1988 Columbia Journalism Review credited the Independent with bucking national trends: "Conventional wisdom would hold that to launch a new weekly newspaper in a place like this, the editors would have to aim squarely at the suburbs and the gentrifying sections of town in order to survive. But the New Haven Independent…has included the city's ethnic and less than upscale neighborhoods and survived. It has gathered up journalism awards in the bargain and held the feet of the city's daily…to the fire."