Metro hipsters across the Hartford region are surely weeping mournfully into their lattes this month, perusing the pages of what will be the final issue of the Courant-published, glossy “lifestyle” magazine CT Slant, not even a year old yet.

Edited by Alistair Highet, who also edits the Courant-owned Hartford Advocate, the magazine was initially hailed (by itself) as “a magazine so unique, so exciting, so extraordinary, readers won’t be able to live without it, and neither will you!” If that was true, what will hipsters do now?

In a December editorial, Highet writes:

It’s been a great experiment, and a lot of fun for all of us at New Mass Media and the Hartford Courant. Over the year, we’ve been invited into some great homes, gathered recipes from the best restaurants, and traveled to exotic beaches. In short, we’ve done what we wanted to do.

But as we looked forward, it seemed to us that other projects needed to be a priority. Recently, our company has introduced Metromix, an entertainment Web site that will do a lot of what CT Slant was designed to do, and we’ve also been pouring more of our time and energy into the Web site of the Hartford Advocate, with a fresh new look, new bloggers and features that we think do a lot of what we were doing in CT Slant, only more efficiently. And so we’ve decided to let the magazine go.

I have regarded CT Slant suspiciously askance ever since one of its cover stories caught my eye, but the content couldn’t deliver the substance my brain desired. Knowing I will soon not be able to pick it up and make fun of it anymore, I couldn’t resist picking up a copy of the December issue.

The cover (pictured) holds promise: it shows a group of young men—”artists and students”—who live in Hartford’s West End. Their old Victorian house on Oxford Street seems to be in somewhat ramshackle condition, and they furnish it with funky thrift shop stuff. They all seem to be interesting people and it would be great to find out more about their lives and why they’re here in Hartford, and what they do to earn their keep or contribute to community life.

Instead the article, which feels insanely short for a cover feature, addresses the men’s choice of interior paint color and how spontaneous it is, and showcases the curiosities they have chosen to decorate their walls. We don’t find out much about the folks themselves or what they do in their community. The piece takes lead-in, lightweight material, and goes nowhere with it except into more lead-in, lightweight material, and then it ends. This is puffery in its finest form, with plenty of white space to boot.

Promotional text on the CT Slant Web site reads, “CT Slant keeps our readers feeling connected to their community, in the know about life in Metro Hartford, informed about the issues that matter to them, and inspired to pursue their goals and dreams.”

Reading the December cover story, I did not feel more connected; rather, I actually felt betrayed by my community. I had a brief urge to meet these young “artists and students” on the street, and shake them by the shoulders, and ask, “How could you let a writer cover you this superficially? What were you thinking? Have you not been keeping up with CT Slant?” Then again, this kind of product is not likely the result of interview subjects asking for it.

Further promotional copy reads, “When readers in the target audience were shown a prototype of CT Slant, here’s what they had to say: fresh, attractive layout. Different from other local magazines. Speaks to their age group [25 to 44]. They would pick it up and give it a try!” A ringing endorsement! The magazine is offered for free in certain locations, just like the Advocates and CT Slant’s cousin, the glossy promo rag Preview Massachusetts. Yes, many of us did “give it a try.” When it turned my stomach, I chose not to read further!

Courant media critic Roger Caitlin welcomed CT Slant back in March thusly: “Oh great: At a time when too many people already assume a bias in their mainstream press, we’re going to accentuate it with a name like Slant?”

In a March 15 article by Diane Weaver Dunne appearing in the Hartford Business Journal, Advocate publisher Janet Reynolds (no longer with the company) said, “Connecticut Life and Hartford Magazine audiences are skewed older and I think what CT Slant is having is really interesting, vibrant writing by real journalists.”

Kerri Provost of Real Hartford critiqued the magazine in a May post. She wrote, “I can’t get away from the feeling that this magazine is nothing more than a glossed up version of the Hartford Advocate, which itself is nothing more than a string of classified ads and an events calendar. In the Age of the Internet, do we need another paper calendar? …There’s truly too much failure in this magazine to report on adequately.” In an Undercurrents post in June, Provost gathers a bit of hope, writing, “[T]his third issue is a vast improvement. Maybe with a complete staff makeover (and I don’t mean cosmetics) and a year, [the magazine will] actually be hip.”

Highet told the CCSU Recorder that the magazine “didn’t have the scale right to be marginally profitable.” From the article, by Melissa Traynor:

He said that Metromix ultimately detracted from CT Slant readership because the Web site targeted the magazine’s demographics and in the end, the magazine was virtually in competition with the parent companies’ own products. With this transition away from the print edition, the Hartford Advocate found that it was efficient to focus more energy on and attention to the Web.

Well, it didn’t last a year, but I think Hartford is probably in better shape without this form of journo-marketing. For hipster-monitoring, I’m keeping an eye on new blog Hartford Scoop instead.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 11:55 am and is filed under Commentary, Community building, Demographics, Hartford, Media, Quality of life, Urban Compass.