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February 21, 2021 / 2021 Power 50

2021 Power 50: 40. Mike DeLuca & Wendy Metcalfe

State and local news organizations have been on the decline for years, as Facebook and Amazon pilfer advertising revenue and private equity firms work to squeeze more savings out of their media holdings.

Mike DeLuca

That’s certainly been the case for most Connecticut news outlets, but over the past dozen years, national media giant Hearst Communications has stood out in an otherwise shrinking sector here.

Hearst Connecticut Media, led since 2019 by Group Publisher/President Mike DeLuca and Editor-in-Chief Wendy Metcalfe, has grown into the largest news organization in the state since 2008, employing some 200 journalists across eight Fairfield County-centric daily papers, including the Connecticut Post and New Haven Register, as well as a dozen weeklies and various websites.

Hearst has a central Connecticut presence with its Middletown Press publication.

Hearst Connecticut has made waves in local media circles over the past few years, poaching marquee talent from the state’s flagship paper, the Hartford Courant, including columnists Dan Haar, Colin McEnroe, Jeff Jacobs and most recently Mike Anthony, in addition to various editors and reporters.

The Tribune-owned Courant last year abandoned its longtime Hartford headquarters, saying its reporters would work remotely instead. The move has created increased speculation about the daily’s future, prompting Attorney General William Tong to pressure major Tribune shareholder Alden Capital to disclose more about its plans for the Courant, which is the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper.

Wendy Metcalfe

DeLuca was named Hearst Connecticut Media Group publisher in 2019 and previously was executive vice president of ad sales for Hearst Newspapers.

Metcalfe was named editor-in-chief also in 2019. Previously she was with Brunswick News Inc. in Canada, a privately-owned company that operates several daily news organizations, where she oversaw the news departments, marketing, circulation and customer service.

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