History
The company was founded in 1973 by Geoffrey Robinson and Edward Matys, then copy editors at The Hartford Courant. Robinson, a native of New Haven, Connecticut, worked as wire service editor of the daily Lorain Journal of Ohio after his graduation from Yale University in 1971. Matys had worked in editorial positions at several Massachusetts and Connecticut newspapers.
The pair began publishing the Valley Advocate, a bi-weekly serving Western Massachusetts, in September 1973 from small basement offices in Amherst, Massachusetts. In September 1974, the Valley Advocate began publishing weekly; Robinson and Matys opened offices in Hartford and started publication of the Hartford Advocate. A year later, in September 1975, the pair began publishing the weekly New Haven Advocate and in 1978 started publication of the Fairfield County Advocate (subsequently renamed Fairfield County Weekly to avoid confusion with the neighboring and unrelated Stamford Advocate).
In 1999, the four-paper chain was sold to Times-Mirror, which was itself acquired by Tribune in 2000. Tribune announced in December 2007 that it would sell the Valley Advocate, its only Massachusetts publication, to Newspapers of New England.
Read more about this topic: Advocate Weekly Newspapers
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