Exclusive live chats between Courant reporters and our subscribers

In February 2020, we launched a subscriber-only live chat tool in an effort to provide additive, exclusive content for Courant subscribers around high-interest content areas.

Our first live chat was hosted by Courant investigative reporter Dave Altimari, who answered over 100 questions related to the high-profile Jennifer Dulos case.

We have done about five other live chats since, including with our UConn basketball reporters, our publisher and the team covering COVID-19 in Connecticut.

You can check out the Dulos live chat here.

Courant Cooking Club

Connecticut restaurants closed in March in response to the coronavirus pandemic, leaving the Courant to rethink its dining coverage for the foreseeable future. As we saw our personal social media feeds fill up with bread recipes and pictures of homemade pizza, we also saw an opportunity to engage our readers around the thing that connects us all: food. That's when we started the private "Courant Cooking Club" Facebook group.

We grew organically by 500 members in one week by promoting a live recipe demonstration with local chef and "Chopped" winner Xavier Santiago.

You can join the Courant Cooking Club here. There are a lot, a lot of reader recipes to check out.

IGTV Coronavirus Q&A Series

When the pandemic started, the Courant began getting a flood of messages to our social accounts from followers asking how they could best protect themselves from COVID-19, how to file for unemployment and even the best way to wash their vegetables. So, we launched a weekly Q&A series on IGTV where our newsroom experts answered the questions followers were submitting.

You can check out more from the series here.