Maine weeklies: going, going, gone?

By Ted Cohen/Patch.com

What if The National Trust for Local News - which owns most of Maine's newspapers and is making budget cuts - killed the print editions of its weeklies in the southern part of the state.

In the wake of the trust's largest Maine newspaper laying off freelance reporters and making budget cuts in its weeklies, it's not a stretch to speculate that the next thing on the trust's chopping block could be all its printed weeklies between Kennebunkport and Yarmouth.

If the four Forecaster newspapers and the Mainely Media weeklies such as Scarborough Leader, South Portland/Cape Elizabeth Sentry Biddeford/Old Orchard Beach Courier and Kennebunk Post suspended their printed editions that would leave more than a dozen towns without their local papers.

The trust’s stated mission of preserving newspapers would be suspect.

Even if it "published" the content online the loss of the paper editions would strike a huge blow to the trust's goal - saving newspapers - and leave its core mission in grave doubt.

What does the top editor have to say?

Could there be even more widespread cuts on the horizon?

The executive editor of Maine's biggest newspaper chain, which includes all the aforementioned weeklies, Carolyn Fox, refused to comment.

Editor's note: Ted Cohen is a former longtime Portland Press Herald staffer.