Gannett's ownership also saw the paper become less politically biased. His holdings included the Portland Press Herald and, after 1929, the Sentinel's in-county competitor, the Kennebec Journal. In 1911, a financially ailing Davis sold the paper to bond holders ten years later, it was bought by Guy Gannett, who was in the process of building a newspaper, radio and television empire in Maine. Murphy-the Waterville Morning Sentinel, within a year, grew from a three-desk operation to requiring its own building, on Silver Street.

Eugene Thayer, leavened by newspaper veteran Thomas F. Senator Charles Fletcher Johnson and future mayor L. The paper is printed at the Portland Press Herald press in South Portland, Maine.įounded in 1904 by officials of the Waterville Democratic Party-Waterville mayor Cyrus Davis future U.S. The newspaper covers cities and towns in parts of Franklin, Kennebec, Penobscot and Somerset counties. The Morning Sentinel is an American daily newspaper published six mornings a week in Waterville, Maine. March 3, 1904 ( ), as Waterville Morning Sentinel “Having local reporters who are informed to ask us questions and hold our feet to the fire and then pass that information on to the local population is immensely important,” he said.Newspaper in Waterville, Maine Morning Sentinel He hopes a nonprofit newspaper that doesn’t have to worry about making money first will shift more resources toward providing news, especially local news. He said news in the town, whose population is the 13th highest in Maine, has not been covered by the Press Herald and its affiliates in the past three years since the local reporter left. That is good news to Jarrod Maxfield, a town councilor in Windham. “We want to preserve assets and build off of them,” Barrionuevo said. There have been more than 135 new nonprofit news outlets created since 2017, double the number in the previous five years, it found in a 2022 member survey. The number of nonprofit news organizations in the United States has risen sharply in the past five years, according to the Institute for Nonprofit News, which represents more than 400 nonprofit news outlets. Gray said the union has reached out to Brower and DeSisto for a meeting and hopes to have one within a couple weeks. The foundation brings great potential, but there still are many questions about what a nonprofit model means for news in Maine, said Megan Gray, a Press Herald reporter who serves as president of the News Guild of Maine, which represents staff at the Portland paper and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville. “I will continue to look at the opportunities that are developing in a structured manner that is fair to all interested parties.”Ī 2019 copy of the Maine Sunday Telegram. “I told them if they could create a viable pathway, they would be considered,” Brower said in an email Monday to the Bangor Daily News.

When those talks stalled Maine Journalism Foundation got aggressive in ramping up and has “really been grinding” the past couple of months, he said.īrower said the foundation requested a meeting during which it asked if he would consider a nonprofit entity purchasing some or all of the assets.

Masthead Maine is the foundation’s first focus, but it plans to look at helping news organizations throughout the state keep afloat.īrower had been talking to other potential buyers, including foundations, Nemitz said. He said the foundation doesn’t want the Portland and other papers to suffer the fate of newspapers in other markets that were bought by hedge funds or predatory investors that slashed the staffs and budgets. “We came together knowing that Reade was at a crossroads and wanting to find an opportunity to preserve local journalism here in Maine,” said Nemitz, who is the president of the foundation. They have no promise in hand from Brower, but company employees from management to newsroom staff are hailing the potential move to an emerging model for journalism across the country.

Those three came together to form the Maine Journalism Foundation, which was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Maine in July and has applied for federal nonprofit status. The media company includes five of Maine’s six daily newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald, and a variety of weekly publications. A 2015 file photo of Masthead Maine owner Reade Brower (left) and CEO Lisa DeSisto.

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