Ralph Nader launches weekly Connecticut newspaper

Consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader has announced plans to create a weekly newspaper in Litchfield County.

According to a Hartford Business Journal report, the first edition of The Winsted Citizen will be published in early 2023. The newspaper’s coverage will encompass Winsted and the surrounding towns of Hartland, Riverton, Colebrook, Norfolk and New Hartford.

Nader, a Winsted native, hired Andy Thibault to serve as editor and publisher. Thibault was a research consultant for the HBO documentary series “Allen v. Farrow” and teaches journalism and communication at the University of New Haven.

Nader plans to have the publication operate as a nonprofit and will offer both online and print editions.

“It will be distributed to most of the households by hand, in print, and stacked up in certain retail stores,” Nader said. “And then we’ll see what the response is because it’ll be vigorously eliciting a response.”

This is the second newspaper that Nader created – he previously launched the Washington, D.C.-based Capitol Hill Citizen in 2022 in a print-only edition.

Photo: Don LaVange / Wikimedia Commons