Stamford Advocate

The Advocate

The Advocate newspaper "honor box" in New Canaan, Connecticut
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	Hearst Communications
Publisher	Henry B. Haitz III
Editor	Barbara Roessner
Founded	1829, as The Stamford Intelligencer
Headquarters	9A Riverbend Drive South, Stamford, Connecticut  United States
Circulation	14,698 daily, 24,949 Sunday in 2010
Website	stamfordadvocate.com

The Advocate is a seven-day daily newspaper based in Stamford, Connecticut. The paper is owned and operated by Hearst Communications, a multinational corporate media conglomerate with $4 billion in revenues.

The Advocate circulates in Stamford and the nearby southwestern Connecticut towns of Darien and New Canaan. The paper's headquarters moved in 2008 from downtown Stamford, across the street from the Stamford Government Center, to the Riverbend complex in the Springdale section of Stamford.

In addition to the regular focus on local news, sports and business, The Advocate pays special attention to the workings of Metro-North Railroad, since many in southwestern Connecticut commute by train.

The Advocate' Website was launched in 1999. In early 2007, the site started featuring message boards.

The Advocate has been called Stamford's oldest continuing business.

The paper's earliest origins come from The Intelligencer, a newspaper originally run out of a small office on the south side of West Park (now Columbus Park in downtown Stamford) in April 1829. William Henry "Hen" Holly installed a printing press there, but despite some support from the community, he closed the publication after a few months for lack of revenue.

Several town leaders then helped to finance the publication again, this time under the name The Sentinel, which first appeared on February 16, 1830. Stamford was never without a local newspaper of one kind or another since then. The oldest known copy of The Sentinel, dated June 22, 1830, is in Stamford's public library, the Ferguson Library. That issue, marked Volume 1, No. 19, consists of four sheets, 15 by 20 inches each, with six columns to a page. The motto of the newspaper, printed at the top of the front page, was: "Pledged to no party's arbitrary way, we follow Truth wher'er she leads the way."

The newspaper published very little local news, according to Don Russell, an Advocate columnist who wrote about the early history of the paper. "[T]he columns were filled with sermons, poems and what were called literary 'gems' from various sources, and some domestic and foreign news items taken from newspapers in big cities."