August 1, 2023

Maine’s biggest newspaper group is now a nonprofit under the National Trust for Local News

The largest newspaper group in Maine is becoming a nonprofit with Tuesday’s completion of the sale of more than 20 daily and weekly newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald.

The National Trust for Local News, which already owns two dozen newspapers in Colorado, is expanding its portfolio through the purchase of five daily newspapers and 17 weekly newspapers that were part of Masthead Maine. Former Masthead owner Reade Brower retained ownership of several weeklies that weren’t part of the deal.

The terms of the transaction, which closed Tuesday, were not disclosed.

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Q&A: Local news can’t be a ‘damsel in distress’

As executive editor of The Washington Post, Marty Baron not only guided the newspaper through a transformative ownership change (with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos taking charge) and the turbulent Trump presidency, but he also oversaw an aggressive expansion of its journalistic mission, accompanied by significant growth in readership, revenues and influence. Rallying behind its slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” The Washington Post re-established itself as a national force in journalism at a time of rising distrust in the press.

Prior to that stint, which lasted from January 2013 to his February 2021 retirement, Baron spent 11 years as the Boston Globe’s top editor. His agenda there was different: scaling back the paper’s international and national ambitions to focus its coverage and investigations on the city and region. Its Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting of the Boston Catholic priest child sex-abuse scandal was dramatized in the 2015 best picture Oscar winner “Spotlight,” with Liev Schreiber playing the unflappable Baron.

Baron also served as executive editor of the Miami Herald during the Elián González custody battle and previously worked for the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. By the time he retired, his newsrooms had collected 18 Pulitzer Prizes, including 11 at the Post. He currently serves on the Knight Foundation board and has written a book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post,” that Flatiron Books will release Oct. 3.

Although Baron, 68, no longer is employed by a newspaper, he remains deeply engaged in the journalism world and has strong opinions on the state of local news, the role of owners, the track record of media pundits, the trappings of nostalgia and the necessity of making tough choices. Those topics are covered in Part 1 of this conversation, conducted with Baron in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts and this writer in the Chicago area.

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