The Commercial Record is going digital after 125 years as a weekly newspaper and 10 as a monthly magazine.
The first issue of The Commercial Record was published in 1882. At the time it was a newspaper containing a week’s worth of real estate transactions and not much else. Over the years its formatting and publication dates changed, and editorial content was added alongside an expanded collection of real estate records.
As its parent company The Warren Group grew, CR – the publication is known affectionately by its initials – expanded to include mortgages, discharges, liens and lis pendens. A Connecticut branch of the company opened, relocated and closed several times over the years, finally for good in the Great Recession. Boston-based reporters began to travel to our neighbor to the south to sniff out the news in residential and commercial real estate, community banking and local politics.
The newspaper became a monthly magazine in 2008, and in its glossy pages reporters continued to bring CR’s readers the news from the Nutmeg State. With the advent of the Internet, the real estate records moved online, with an abbreviated version still appearing in print.
The Internet, the original disruptor, has changed the world in ways we’re still figuring out – and it has certainly changed the world of print journalism. It has greatly impacted the way news is delivered and consumed.
More than 80 percent of The Commercial Record’s subscribers read the news only online, via both the website’s homepage and our daily e-news alerts. The weekly records section on the website consistently receives the most traffic, save for breaking news stories. Continuing to print and mail editions, whether as newspapers or magazines, has become cost inefficient for The Warren Group and would cause a subscription price increase that would be indefensibly high.
This is the penultimate issue of CR; April’s issue will be our last in print. All the news and information you’ve come to rely on will continue to be available on our website at www.thecommercialrecord.com; the latest real estate records will continue to be available Thursday mornings.
Converting to a wholly digital environment affords our subscribers access to the latest news and data as quickly as we write it; it also provides access to the most reliable resource for real estate and financial news in Connecticut from anywhere you are – in the field, in the office, on the train – it’s all there for you. And it allows us to provide the very best product without passing any additional costs on to our loyal customers.
While the way the news is delivered is once again changing to reflect the needs of our audience, our commitment to first-rate journalism and best-in-class data has not. Without our subscribers, there would be no Commercial Record at all, in any form, and we appreciate your willingness to accommodate this most recent change.
Your print subscription will automatically roll into a new digital subscription where you will be able to continue to use your current username and password. If you need assistance accessing your digital subscription, please contact customer service at 617-896-5388 or email customerservice@thewarrengroup.com.
The staff of The Commercial Record looks forward to continuing to provide all the news you need for the next 135 years, in whatever format the future finds.
