KENT—A newspaper must be a civically engaged organization but the Connecticut Secretary of State wanted to recognize the extra efforts of The Kent Good Times Dispatch in a recent newsletter.
Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas began the Civically Engaged Organization (CEO) program because she wanted to encourage businesses to be active members of their communities and share civic information, including on how to vote in elections.
“The only qualification to be a Civically Engaged Organization is to have a desire to help people in Connecticut understand how our representative democracy works and how they can participate,” Thomas said during an interview Monday.
In June, the newspaper and publisher Kent News Inc. were the first CEO to be recognized by Thomas’ office and saluted for creating a voter guide for the November 2023 election and sponsoring a October 2023 debate between the candidates for first selectman.
“The Kent GTD has helped increase awareness and attendance at town hall meetings through their coverage,” it was stated in the newsletter. “The Kent GTD is a shining example of CEO ideals—as a business, non-profit, and news outlet. Thank you to the Kent GTD for all your good work!”
Karen Chase, who helped found Kent News Inc. and is a member of the Board of Directors, said Tuesday that it was her idea to join the CEO program and create the voter guide.
“I think a newspaper is already civically engaged because part of our job is making sure that the public is provided with accurate information about government and participation,” said Chase. “Since we’ve been publishing the newspaper we’ve noticed that for most things there is an uptick in the amount of people showing up for meetings and for votes.”
Chase said she helped organize Thomas’ visit to town May 20 when the secretary visited with several businesses to help promote the CEO program.
Thomas explained that the Secretary of State’s Office has two very distinct sections with election administration and the business registry.
“Those two things always felt so disconnected to me, so we were brainstorming on how we could bring the two together or is there any natural overlap there? I started thinking of all my experience as a business owner and when I talked to other business owners they are all so philanthropic and support community organizations and try to get involved in whatever their local community is. I thought why can’t they also share civic information when an election is coming up,” Thomas said.
“The idea is to take the natural community mindedness of businesses, community organizations, houses of worship and just asking them to incorporate civic learning as part of that mission,” she said of the Civically Engaged Organization program.
Organizations and businesses are asked to take the CEO pledge online. There is no cost to participate. There are over 200 CEOs at this time. The Town of Kent has also joined.
The pledge asks participants to communicate a variety of information with employees and/or customers about voting and election days and use social media to share the organization’s commitment to civic engagement. It also asks businesses to give employees time off to vote on Election Days and give employees time to volunteer in their community.
Thomas sees the CEO program as a way to increase voter turnout. She said Kent’s voter turnout in 2023 was 57 percent, which she called “amazing” in comparison to the state average of 32 percent in municipal elections.
“Kent has higher voter turnout than the statewide averages,” she said.
She noted that the vast majority of election information in the state is delivered by political parties.
“In some towns that’s great because they know their community and they do a lot of outreach,” Thomas said. “In some towns, unaffiliated voters get very little information because the political parties may not need their votes to win an election.”
She said the CEO program can help fill in the gaps until the state decides to include a budget item for her office to do this kind of outreach.
Kent News Inc. President Andrea Schoeny said this week there are plans to update the Voter Guide. It will need new information on early voting to reflect the legislative changes enacted in the state. There is a grant being sought from the Rural News Network that would be used to fund an updated document.
The board sees keeping people informed as part of the organization’s mission.
“Any kind of education we give people is helpful. We’re not just the newspaper. We’re a news and information source,” Schoeny said.
In that vein, the board organized a hybrid debate Oct. 13, 2023 between the three first selectman candidates. In-person attendees included 70 registered Kent voters and there were 90 unique viewers who attended live via Zoom. There were also 391 link clicks on the debate recording.
Schoeny also shared some data about readership. During the initial launch on Oct 12, 2023, The Kent GTD had 2,150 post views on 24 posts from 499 visitors. In October, with the three weekly editions, there were 8,217 post views from 2,109 visitors.
Schoeny said the average weekly stats from April 1 to June 30 are representational of the impact the newspaper is having:
There are 3,395 post (article) views each week.
The site is seeing 1,441 unique visitors each week.
There are 2.4 posts viewed during a visit per visitor.
The average weekly posts are 25.3 articles.
