A nonprofit that wants to preserve local newspapers buys 22 newspapers in Maine, including The Portland Press Herald and The Sun Journal of Lewiston.
The National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit founded in 2021, will purchase the newspapers from Masthead Maine, a private company that owns most of the independent media outlets in the state, including five of the six daily newspapers. Masthead Maine owner Reade Brower had indicated this year that he was looking into a sale.
The deal includes the five dailies and 17 weeklies, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, the CEO of the National Trust for Local News, said Tuesday.
Ms. Hansen Shapiro said Maine residents had told her organization that there was an opportunity for nonprofit ownership after Bill Nemitz, a longtime Portland Press Herald columnist, asked readers in April to donate to support a nonprofit. help preserve local journalism in the state.
“We strongly believe in the power of independent, impartial local journalism to strengthen communities and build meaningful connections,” said Ms. Hansen Shapiro. “We understand the critical role Masthead Maine and its esteemed publications play in serving Maine’s communities with reliable, high-quality news.”
The deal is expected to close by the end of July, she said. She declined to specify the sale price.
In addition to the Portland and Lewiston newspapers, the sale also includes The Kennebec Journal in Augusta, The Morning Sentinel in Waterville and The Times Record in Brunswick. The state’s sixth daily newspaper, The Bangor Daily News, continues to be owned by the Bangor Publishing Company.
“This could be the most important moment in the history of Maine journalism,” Steve Greenlee, the editor-in-chief of The Portland Press Herald and The Maine Sunday Telegram, said in an email. “Our news story has always strived to serve the public interest, and now our business model will align with that mission.”
Many local newspapers have closed in the past 20 years as declining print media circulation and declining advertising revenues have eroded them. Private equity firms and hedge funds have picked up distressed assets in recent years, often further constraining shrinking newsrooms. Investment firm Alden Global Capital has become the second largest newspaper publisher in the country.
A number of non-profit news organizations have sprung up in the United States in recent years to try to address the crisis in local news and fill a void left by closed newspapers. These include outlets such as The Baltimore Banner and Honolulu Civil Beat.
Based in Lexington, Massachusetts, the National Trust for Local News was founded with the goal of preserving local news outlets by helping them find ways to become sustainable. The organization owns 24 local newspapers in Colorado through a partnership with The Colorado Sun. It has philanthropic funders, including the Gates Family Foundation, the Google News Initiative, and the Knight Foundation.
The board of directors of the News Guild of Maine, the union representing nearly 200 workers at the newspapers, said in a statement that it was grateful to Mr. Brower for choosing “to pursue a not-for-profit business model rather than are selling companies to the bad actors who have decimated news organizations across the country.”
“We see the non-profit model as one that can better support journalism’s dual nature as both a consumer product and a public good,” the board said.
