Maine diner owner or newspaper genius?

By Ted Cohen/Patch.com

Running a newspaper chain while managing a diner is proving to be a tough balancing act for a Maine publishing boss.

But Stefanie Manning is good at performative art.

In an open letter to readers of the Portland Press Herald, Manning has successfully added a new item to her menu - unadulterated hubris.

The delusion that subscribers will buy her spin is epic.

"Our mission has never been clearer: We believe every town and region deserves to have its stories told," says the woman who just days ago laid off 49 staffers.

Manning, whose title is managing director of the Maine Trust for Local News, has slashed and burned her way to the top, killing off daily editions for the Lewiston Sun Journal and Morning Sentinel of Waterville as well as shuttering weekly papers and abolishing dozens of jobs.

While these kinds of cuts may be happening elsewhere in the newspaper industry, at least those publishers tell their readers the truth about having to cut costs.

Not Stefanie. All spin. No honest explanation of having to reduce expenses.

The spending cuts are the latest strategy for saving a sinking ship by Manning's bosses at the National Trust for Local News, which bought the Maine newspaper chain in 2023.

Manning is just following orders - kind of like taking orders at the Miss Portland Diner in Maine's largest city.

See, Manning owns that diner as a side hustle. On her LinkedIn page, for instance, she doesn't speak of the virtues of journalism.

No she speaks about corned-beef hash.

"If you haven't tried our corned beef hash you don't know what you are missing," Manning's LinkedIn profile actually says.

But the message to readers in the Maine Sunday Telegram deftly left out any mention of how you run a newspaper company while juggling breakfast orders.

Maybe that's why the Poynter Institute in its recent analysis of the condition of the trust's newspaper experiment headlined it "What went wrong at the National Trust for Local news."

Manning's approach to trying to brainwash the readers of her newspaper into thinking she knows how to juggle journalism with corned-beef hash isn't lost on many of them.

"In classic newspaper terms, you 'buried the lede,' Ms. Manning," one reader writes. "It was clear from the headline the plan is to cut back on print editions and it took you a long time to get to the point after lots of flowery talk. Is this kind of writing what we have to look forward to?"

"Most of the stories on today’s digital front page are repeats, stale news," writes another reader.

Lest anyone have any doubt, however, whether a diner owner can run a newspaper, in Manning's message to readers in the Maine Sunday Telegram she promises "more dynamic coverage, expanded digital offerings and a commitment to preserving the core values of local news."

What exactly is "dynamic coverage" and how do you produce more of that? Is this something new being taught at journalism schools? Oh wait, Manning is a breakfast chef, not a journalist so this a marketing thing, kinda like hawking corned-beef hash.

"Core values of local news" Huh? Local news is fires, meetings, accidents, things that happen locally. So what would those core values be as opposed to, say, international news or sports news?

Here's a journalism lesson for you Ms. Manning: Local news means stories that take place in a particular local geography -- they have no more core values than say a car accident has a core value.

Journalism, however, is the practice of producing those stories. Granted, that's not as easy as corned-beef hash.