A nonprofit that aims to preserve local ownership for newspapers will buy 22 Maine papers, including The Portland Press Herald and The Sun Journal of Lewiston.
The National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that started in 2021, will buy the papers from Masthead Maine, a private company that owns most of the state’s independent media outlets, including five of the six dailies. -its day papers. Masthead Maine’s owner, Reade Brower, signaled this year that he was exploring a sale.
The deal includes five daily papers and 17 weekly papers, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, the chief executive of the National Trust for Local News, said Tuesday.
said Ms. Hansen Shapiro said Maine residents told his organization there was an opportunity for nonprofit ownership after Bill Nemitz, a longtime columnist for the Portland Press Herald, the readers asked in April to donate to help a nonprofit organization keep local journalism in the state.
“We firmly believe in the power of independent, non-partisan local journalism to strengthen communities and build meaningful connections,” said Ms. Hansen Shapiro. “We understand the important role that Masthead Maine and its valued publications play in serving Maine communities with reliable, high-quality news.”
The deal is expected to close by the end of July, he said. He declined to specify the sale price.
In addition to the Portland and Lewiston papers, the sale includes The Kennebec Journal in Augusta, The Morning Sentinel in Waterville and The Times Record in Brunswick. The state’s sixth daily paper, The Bangor Daily News, remains owned by the Bangor Publishing Company.
“This may be the most important moment in the history of Maine journalism,” Steve Greenlee, the executive editor of The Portland Press Herald and The Maine Sunday Telegram, said in an email. “Our news reporting has always strived to serve the public good, and now our business model will align with that mission.”
Many local newspapers have closed over the past 20 years, as declining print circulation and slowing advertising revenue have weakened them. Private equity firms and hedge funds have in recent years snapped up troubled assets, often cutting shrinking newsrooms. Investment firm Alden Global Capital has become the second largest newspaper operator in the country.
A number of nonprofit news organizations have sprung up across the United States in recent years to try to address the local news crisis and fill the void left by shuttered newspapers. These include outlets such as The Baltimore Banner and Honolulu Civil Beat.
The National Trust for Local News, based in Lexington, Mass., was started with the goal of protecting local news outlets by helping them find ways to be sustainable. The organization owns 24 local newspapers in Colorado through a partnership with The Colorado Sun. It has philanthropic funders that include the Gates Family Foundation, the Google News Initiative and the Knight Foundation.
The executive board of the News Guild of Maine, the union that represents nearly 200 workers at the papers, said in a statement that it thanked Mr. Brower chose to “pursue a nonprofit business model rather than sell his companies to bad actors who have damaged news organizations across the country.”
“We see the nonprofit model as one that can better sustain the dual nature of journalism as both a consumer product and a public good,” the board said.
