Maine editor, ad mgr, quit - just the latest

By Ted Cohen/Patch.com

Two more Maine newspaper managers have walked out the door, bringing to nine the number of executives who have resigned since a string of newspapers was bought by a "non-profit" corporation.

Judy Meyer, editor of the Lewiston Sun Journal, disclosed she's resigning.

Meyer's ouster comes on the heels of the exodus of longtime Portland Press Herald ad Vice President Courtney Spencer.

The resignations bring the tally to nine of top managers to leave the National Trust for Local News since it bought three Maine dailies and a string of the state's weeklies in 2023.

The tax-exempt trust’s house of cards seems to be collapsing nationwide - it's now closing two dailies in Colorado, which is the U.S. headquarters of the Maine Trust for Local News, on the heels of its problems in Maine.

The trust was good at raising money from donors but has shown itself pretty bad at actually running newspapers.

And that wasn't its original mission. After all, trust officials told donors they were buying newspapers to save them. They boasted they were the country's largest non-profit newspaper company. They built up a corporate staff with salaries much larger than the reporters they claimed to save.

Now they're shutting them down and cutting staffs.

They of course thought they were smarter than the local management so they tried running the papers themselves - from Colorado, no less. Big fail.

The Maine managers seem to have gotten the message - by voting with their feet.

Meyer and Spencer were the most recent to walk. Before them seven others left including top managers at the state's largest paper as well as the publisher of the Journal.

Since buying the Portland Press Herald and other Maine papers, the National Trust for Local News has blundered its way to being one of the worst-managed companies to own local newspapers.

But wait. There's more: The tax-exempt national trust gave its CEO, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, a 216% raise to $370,000 while many of its reporters were making barely above minimum wage. Then they cut news products, folded popular sections, killed community weeklies, fired columnists, etc.

Remember, these were the people who said their mission was to save local news. Where have you heard that before? That's the mantra from every newspaper chain bean counter just before they sharpen their knives.

Shapiro convinced donors she knew how to save journalism but she ended up resigning after running into trouble with the Maine newspaper purchases.

Maybe the Harvard heads should stick with academia and leave the professionals to run the journalism and the business side. Just a thought…

In retrospect, it wasn't the buying that was the problem. It was trying to run the papers that was the issue. They've been in over their head from the start.

Wonder what those big philanthropic donors think about all of this now.

Maine staffers are hoping the trust sells the papers, especially the Press Herald, to someone who respects local news and local management.