RJ TODAY EMPLOYEES
“I have a lot of pride working for the Record-Journal.” — Kaitlin Horn Gilmore recalled arriving early to put chains on the delivery trucks so they could get through the snow. He recalled an underground electrical fire that knocked power out to the entire downtown. The Record-Journal was printed at the Waterbury Republican-American.
sitions that have changed due to technology improvements. Donnelly recalled the days when hot wax was used to paste the news stories and advertisements to the newspaper pages. She also remembers processing colored photos using a system that separated the colors before it went to the printing press.
“We never missed a publication day,” Gilmore said. “It might have been delayed. But people, they want their paper, now.”
“When I started here, the people would set it up by hand and did everything manually,” Donnelly said. “The computer made it more efficient.”
Gilmore, who now lives part-time in Florida, recalls former Record-Journal Publisher Carter White coming through the mailroom every day asking how things were going. “We get it digital now,” he said. The focus on the Record-Journal’s web site over the past decade has probably been the biggest change he has witnessed in his 31 years at the Record-Journal, Tomaselli said. The reader has control over when and how they consume news, prompting the news team to strive to provide fresh content around the clock, seven days a week. “Instead of waiting for a carrier to put news that was collected the day before on their door step, readers use their phones, pads and computers to immediately get news that we put on the web site,” he said. “It used to be that I would go home at the end of the day and tell my family about the news we had been covering before they or anyone else had heard about it. Now I go home and my family tells me about news they have seen on the RJ web site before I know about it.” A committed, flexible ownership team is the main reason for the Record-Journal’s success, said Ryan, who also served as president and publisher of the Sun Publishing Co. before retiring in 2013. The Sun Publishing Co. publishes the Record-Journal’s sister newspaper in Rhode Island, the Westerly Sun. “(The owners are) “extremely adaptable to change,” Ryan said. “We had a website before other papers as digital was emerging.” Dawn Donnelly has worked for the Record-Journal for 31 years in a variety of po-
Donnelly is the RJ’s page planning coordinator and head of promotions and contests.
“We never missed a publication day” — Ken Gilmore
THEN
Timothy Ryan
(circa 1979)
THEN
“They are a nice company to work for,” Donnelly said. “They are flexible and as a company, they’ve always been good.” Donnelly has two children, who have always been aware that their mother worked at the Record-Journal. Today, as the youngest heads off for college, Donnelly is grateful for the flexible hours the Record-Journal offered. “I really like those hours,” she said. “The flexibility is amazing. All of us are always learning something new.” Kaitlin Horn is a media sales consultant for the RJ Media Group. She started in the classified department at The Westerly Sun, the Record-Journal’s sister newspaper in Rhode Island, and was promoted to an outside media sales consultant, based in Meriden, when she moved to Connecticut. Horn now covers markets in Southington and Berlin. “I have a lot of pride working for the Record-Journal, being a media consultant puts me in contact daily with great local customers that rely on our paper to reach the public,” Horn said. “With the Record- Journal being family owned for 150 years, it is so special to me to work for a great company that cares about their employees and advertising partners. In the future, I look forward to our company only growing with customers to help them succeed as we have been doing in the past 150 years.”
Ralph Tomaselli
(circa 1987)
NOW Timothy Ryan Former Executive Vice President (1977 - 2012)
NOW Ralph Tomaselli Sr. Vice President, Editor
(Employee since 1985)
Kaitlin Horn Multimedia Sales Berlin Citizen Southington Citizen
(Employee since 1915)
Dawn Donnelly Planning Coordinator
(Employee since 1986)
150TH ANNIVERSARY RECORD-JOURNAL
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