In 1988 Columbia Journalism Review credited the Independent with bucking national trends: “Conventional wisdom would hold that to launch a new weekly newspaper in a place like this, the editors would have to aim squarely at the suburbs and the gentrifying sections of town in order to survive.
It has gathered up journalism awards in the bargain and held the feet of the city’s daily…to the fire.” The New Haven Independent is also the name of a separate digital news site founded in 2005, 15 years after the print newspaper ceased publication.
[3] The Independent's editorial philosophy distinguished the paper both from beat-driven traditional dailies and from alternative weeklies aimed primarily at baby boomers and entertainment consumers.
"We hope the New Haven Independent will find readers in every neighborhood, in every social and economic class, in every age group," declared the paper's editorial page in the inaugural issue.
Connecticut Superior Court Judge Robert Berdon dismissed the suit on grounds that “the state constitution not only protects opinion to the same extent as the federal constitution, but goes further.” Berdon found that under the Connecticut constitution, clearly marked editorials and opinions on the conduct of public officials “are entitled to an absolute, unconditional privilege.” Arguing that meritless lawsuits were a threat to news organizations, Berdon wrote that “Connecticut should take additional steps to protect the public's right to a free press.” This ruling went further than any previous state court decision and was regarded as a significant precedent on so-called Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP suits).
[11] Before ceasing publication in January 1990, the Independent was briefly edited by Bridgeport, CT journalist Leonard Grimaldi, who in 2003 pled guilty to racketeering charges and was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison in a municipal government corruption scandal.
[12] Notable alumni of the paper include Professor Elizabeth Coonrod Martinez[13] of DePaul University, a noted Latino Studies scholar; Cynthia Savo of the Yale Child Study Center; Margaret Spillane,[14] writer for The Nation and Salon.com and instructor in Cultural Journalism at Yale University; New Haven political press secretary Khalid Lum; investigative journalist and 2008 Alicia Patterson Fellow Carole Bass;[15] Professor Joel Schechter of San Francisco State University and author, Messiahs of 1933: How Yiddish Theatre Survived Adversity through Satire; Bruce Shapiro, Executive Director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia Journalism School and a contributing editor to The Nation; Virginia Blaisdell,[16] photographer and designer; Hartford Courant theater critic Christopher Arnott;[17] and Joel Keehn, senior healthcare editor of Consumer Reports.