- $3.6 millionprojected revenue in 2026, up from $1.6 million in 2019
- 90%revenue from readership through memberships and donations
- About 75%readers concentrated in Hartford, New Haven and Fairfield counties
- 20%audience increase since 2025
At a Glance
- Founded
- 2010
- Location
- Connecticut
- Organization Type
- Statewide, nonprofit news organization
- Ownership
- The Connecticut Mirror / nonprofit
- Staff Size
- 29 full-time employees; 23 editorial and six business staff, plus three part-time employees
- Revenue Mix
- Individual donations (59%), foundation grants (34%), advertising and content licensing (7%)
When CEO and Publisher Bruce Putterman arrived at The Connecticut Mirror (“CT Mirror”) in 2017, the organization had seven journalists and little business infrastructure. A series of early funding decisions — including a collaborative grant from Connecticut community foundations and a spot in the American Journalism Project's first cohort — allowed it to build the membership, audience, operations and fundraising infrastructure needed to grow.
Today, CT Mirror has 29 full-time employees, including 23 editorial staff, and its revenue has grown to a projected $3.6 million from $1.6 million in 2019.
In almost every year since its founding, CT Mirror has run operating surpluses. About 60% of its revenue comes from individual donations, 30% from foundations, 6% or 7% from advertising, and the rest from content licensing.
Even as many news organizations lose traffic to AI, CT Mirror’s audience has grown 20% since 2025. Readers in Hartford, New Haven and Fairfield counties account for 75% of CT Mirror's audience, with the rest spread across the state’s other five more rural counties.
“A lot of nonprofit news organizations are chasing national money,” Putterman said. “In Connecticut, people are familiar with us. They understand the quality and impact of [our] work.”
CT Mirror’s growing reader support also speaks to its reader service. This year, the newsroom won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, a Health Policy Award and several recognitions from the New England Newspaper and Press Association.
As Putterman prepares to retire in June, CT Mirror’s successor will look to hire a chief operating officer and major grants manager to grow the news organization’s fundraising and data analytics infrastructure, upgrade technology tools and grow events.
Srishti Bose interviewed Putterman via Teams. This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.
- Leadership & operations
- Philanthropy
- Revenue models & diversification
- Audiences
- Accountability journalism
- Role & mission of journalism
- Statewide news
Leadership & operations
-
Srishti Bose How did you get into the news business and what brought you to CT Mirror?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman When I was in college, I was a reporter at a local radio station for four years. It was actually a commercial, student-run radio station, one of seven in the country at Cornell University. I loved it and I thought I wanted to be a journalist.
Then, for whatever reason, I veered away from that after I graduated. I always regretted it and was always kind of a student of journalism, reading stories about what was happening in the media and issues related to journalism.
I had been working for a small consulting company; I was generating a lot of business and not getting compensated for it, so I thought, “Well, I could do that for myself.”
So I hung out my own shingle in 2000 and started my own consulting business. I took on many nonprofit clients and did 45 strategic plans for nonprofit organizations over the next 12 years or so. So I accumulated a lot of knowledge of nonprofit management.
Then, in 2016, CT Mirror was looking to hire a publisher. I thought that would be a great closing of the loop from my early interest in journalism, my lingering regret and my nonprofit experience. I applied, not really expecting to get very far, but I did get hired.
I do think that is part of why we were successful. It's not that a journalist can't be successful — there are a number of nonprofit organizations led by journalists that are very successful. But for us and the circumstances we faced here, what the Mirror needed at the time was somebody who was really going to focus on revenue generation, innovation, operations and the ability to scale.
It needed somebody who could bring a business orientation to leading a news organization.
Bruce Putterman
- Leadership & operations
- Philanthropy
- Revenue models & diversification
- Audiences
- Accountability journalism
- Role & mission of journalism
- Statewide news
Philanthropy
-
Srishti Bose You’ve now spent close to a decade at CT Mirror with that business orientation, working with foundations, philanthropists, businesses and readers to grow the newsroom. What were some of the key decisions that helped grow its sustainability?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman There was an early precipitating event that led to another precipitating event and then led to the takeoff.
When I got here, I understood that Connecticut is a very balkanized state. There are no county governments. There are 169 towns, each with its own identity, and there was very little collaboration among them.
The community foundations in Connecticut were structured the same way. About 20 community foundations existed, each responsible for a small number of towns. Having worked in the nonprofit sector, I understood that there were situations in which statewide collaboration made sense.
I spoke with leaders of some of the largest community foundations, who were looking for the right vehicle to fund something in the nonprofit sector, and statewide journalism struck me as a good vehicle for them to do that. They agreed to make a collaborative grant, with all of them contributing to a $100,000 grant in my first year.
The money was helpful, obviously, but what was really helpful was that, a year later, I met John Thornton, who was starting the American Journalism Project (co-founder). He knew about what we had done in Connecticut and took an interest in us. He liked the fact that I was a business person running a news organization as opposed to a journalist.
In 2019, we were one of 11 news organizations in AJP's first grant-making cohort. That's when things took off. It attracted other gifts and gave us the funding to invest in business infrastructure that we didn't have.
When I joined, it was seven journalists and me. I was doing everything on the business side: revenue, finance, HR, operations, marketing, legal and technology.
The AJP gift allowed us to hire a membership person, an audience person, an operations person and a major gifts person. That's what led to the pretty meteoric growth of the last seven years.
Bruce Putterman
- Leadership & operations
- Philanthropy
- Revenue models & diversification
- Audiences
- Accountability journalism
- Role & mission of journalism
- Statewide news
Revenue models & diversification
-
Srishti Bose The vast majority of your revenue today comes from community contributions, which is the goal for many nonprofit news organizations. How did you get there?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman Revenue diversification was always the goal. We've never been overly dependent on any one revenue source. Our largest individual contributor, grant or individual, represents about 15% of our revenue, so we're pretty diversified in that regard.
How did we get there? A lot of it was identifying opportunities and going for them. We've been pretty aggressive about that.
But the product is what really ultimately makes the sale and closes the deal. We've always been very oriented toward high-impact, in-depth enterprise and investigative journalism. There's a dearth of that, certainly in our state and really around the country.
The formula ultimately is having a really, really good story to tell about yourself that aligns with what excites funders.
Bruce Putterman
- Leadership & operations
- Philanthropy
- Revenue models & diversification
- Audiences
- Accountability journalism
- Role & mission of journalism
- Statewide news
Audiences
-
Srishti Bose What can you tell us about CT Mirror's audiences? How do you plan to maintain or grow them?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman It's statewide.
It's hard to define our audience demographically because we don't have accounts and don't collect demographic data on people. At best, we know what Google Analytics tells us about age, gender and geography, and we have a sense based on who our members, subscribers and donors are.
What you'd expect from a public policy-focused news organization is that many people are involved at the state and municipal government level, including elected officials and staff. Then there's a concentric circle of advocacy groups, lobbyists, influencers and community leaders, followed by people who are just really interested in what's happening in their state.
Together, those groups still make up a relatively small percentage of the population.
We're about to launch an arts and culture beat to broaden our audience a little, both for its own sake and as a way to introduce more people to CT Mirror and our core policy focus on what's happening in Connecticut that impacts their lives.
Bruce Putterman
- Leadership & operations
- Philanthropy
- Revenue models & diversification
- Audiences
- Accountability journalism
- Role & mission of journalism
- Statewide news
Accountability journalism
-
Srishti Bose Congratulations on this year’s Pulitzer Prize for your investigation into predatory towing practices, in collaboration with ProPublica. How did this investigation, which led to changes in Connecticut’s towing laws, come about?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman When we got the original AJP money in late 2019 and early 2020, our goal had always been to form an investigative team someday. It had been this wistful, over-the-horizon dream.
The money came along, we invested and made more money, and by 2021 we'd hired our first investigative reporter. Later that year, we hired investigative reporters Nos. 2 and 3.
Our editor (Elizabeth Hamilton) had been an investigative reporter at the Hartford Courant, and they did what any investigative unit does: look for stories about corruption, betrayal of trust and abuse of power.
We had also worked with ProPublica as part of its Local Reporting Network in 2019 on a year-long project examining housing segregation in Connecticut. It was a year-long analysis of the very dramatic housing segregation that exists in Connecticut. People are surprised to hear that. People think of Connecticut as this really uber-wealthy white picket fence place, but four of the 50 poorest cities in the country are in Connecticut. The relationship continued. When our team was working on the towing investigation, we had an opportunity to collaborate with ProPublica again.
The impact of the story that matters most to us is that a major legislative reform package was introduced immediately after we published the first story. And that package was adopted in 2025 (six months after publishing). During the 2026 legislative session, yet another towing industry reform package was adopted. That's the ultimate in impact for us — I at least measure impact in terms of legislative change.
That's really what gets people's attention when you're out raising money and applying for grants and things. In terms of readership, the reaction to the Pulitzer itself has been fantastic. You know, when we go to fundraisers now, I'll say, “Hey, how about that Pulitzer?!” and the room erupts in applause.
What I think we've learned is that investigative journalism is one of the things we do particularly well and something that has particular value to Connecticut. It can also have measurable impact.
The Pulitzer-winning project was an example of sustained accountability reporting leading to changes in Connecticut's laws. That's ultimately what we're trying to do: produce journalism that makes a difference.
Bruce Putterman
- Leadership & operations
- Philanthropy
- Revenue models & diversification
- Audiences
- Accountability journalism
- Role & mission of journalism
- Statewide news
Role & mission of journalism
-
Srishti Bose You said impact and audience aren't necessarily the same thing. How do you think about that tension?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman I struggle with this a lot. Impact and audience aren't necessarily related to one another.
Some funders want to know, “What's your audience?” And I think what they really want to understand is: Is your audience growing? Are we investing in something that's becoming more successful and more relevant to more people in the state?
At that level, the audience is important. But I think at an emotional level, what's really important is the impact of the journalism.
For us, sustainability in Connecticut is, at its core, high-impact journalism. That has particular value to the state overall and, in a happy coincidence, to major foundations and individual donors.
It's a different model from public media. Public media can do excellent journalism, but its appeal goes beyond journalism. It's about community, storytelling and diverse experiences.
For us, from a newsroom perspective, it's about the quality and impact of the journalism.
Bruce Putterman -
Srishti Bose If you're as successful as you want to be, what impact would CT Mirror have across the state?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman Connecticut is not a news desert. There are still 15 daily newspapers in a very small state. But they've all experienced significant shrinkage over the last 15 years in covering state government and, to a significant degree, even local government.
The opportunity here is not just statewide coverage, which is a void we're filling. We're increasingly looking at doing more municipal or regional coverage within Connecticut because that is emerging as a gap as well.
One of my goals has always been to create a greater sense of statewide community in Connecticut.
Connecticut is a very bifurcated place. Fairfield County is very oriented toward New York and is part of the New York media market. It's very wealthy, and a disproportionate amount of state income tax comes from Fairfield County, ultimately helping fund other parts of the state.
I think we're in a unique position to help people from all over the state get to know one another and one another's perspectives and, in the process, build a stronger sense of statewide community.
Bruce Putterman -
Srishti Bose Is there anything else about CT Mirror's model that you think is distinctive?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman One thing we do is have a statewide opinion page that partially addresses this notion of helping people in different parts of the state get to know one another.
We publish op-ed-length letters to the editor, and we have a part-time editor who works with people who submit them to help make them publishable. They contribute to the dialogue. An extension of that is something we call Student Voice.
It started with a public policy professor at Trinity College who assigned op-ed writing in her public policy class. We caught wind of it and said we would publish those op-eds and create a brand around them.
That first year, eight or 10 students published op-eds, and they were great. They addressed issues we wouldn't necessarily have thought of. It also expanded our audience since other young people read them, not to mention their parents and their parents' friends.
We eventually hired a very part-time editor to pitch the project to colleges and universities around the state and work with students to develop their ideas into coherent pieces for submission to the opinion section.
We've probably published 100 to 150 of those over the last several years.
Bruce Putterman
- Leadership & operations
- Philanthropy
- Revenue models & diversification
- Audiences
- Accountability journalism
- Role & mission of journalism
- Statewide news
Statewide news
-
Srishti Bose What advice would you give other local newsrooms that are trying to build a similarly sustainable statewide coverage model?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman Ultimately, you've got to raise more money than you spend, whether that's in a nonprofit or for-profit context.
We have some very committed donors, and I have no reason to believe they won't remain committed donors for a long time. But there's no long-term government contract or product that people need and are willing to pay for.
A lot of it is how we continue to tell our story and understand what people in Connecticut are interested in.
You always have to be looking for new people who want to invest because there's attrition. That's a fact of life in philanthropy and in sales. Our goal is to raise money faster than it goes away.
But what works for us is high-impact journalism. What may work for other communities might be deep dives into communities, positive things happening there or journalism that strengthens communities in some way.
The lesson isn't that every organization should copy CT Mirror's model. It's that you have to understand what creates value in your community**.**
Bruce Putterman -
Srishti Bose What is next for CT Mirror?
Srishti Bose -
Bruce Putterman We've got a roadmap of pretty big initiatives for 2026, 2027 and 2028.
This year, we're launching an arts and culture beat. It's a journalism strategy, an audience growth strategy and, frankly, a revenue strategy.We're doing early research and community listening around possibly establishing a bureau in Fairfield County in 2028.
Connecticut actually has two power centers. Hartford is the government and political power center, but Fairfield County is the financial and wealth power center.
We've been very Hartford-centric in our coverage. We're exploring establishing a presence in that other power center in Fairfield County to complement our statewide coverage.
Beyond that, we'll continue to hire well, give people some level of autonomy and keep the focus on high-impact journalism. We'd also like to make investments on the business team to continue growing revenue.
Bruce Putterman
This interview is part of the State of Local News Report’s Bright Spots section, which highlights innovative local news outlets around the United States. These outlets offer lessons for others aiming to fill news gaps, grow audiences and community impact, and achieve financial sustainability. As local news deserts continue to spread, our hope is that others will be inspired by these stories so we can all make progress together. Find the complete list of 2026 Bright Spots here.