Duncan jumps in: The Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal, and Morning Sentinel have a new guy in charge of their political coverage. MaineToday media CEO Richard Connor has hired Dale Duncan, former publisher of the Indianapolis Star, to coordinate all election stories at the three papers through the end of the year. Duncan started work on Sept. 8.

The Lewiston Sun Journal ended its drought of State House coverage by hiring Steve Mistler to fill the government and politics beat. The Lewiston paper had been without a reporter in Augusta since July, when Rebekah Metzler jumped to the rival Kennebec Journal.

Old news from Eliot’s enemies: A new Web site called “The Secret File on Eliot Cutler” is anything but secret. Word of its existence spread across the Maine political scene this week with unusual haste. Within hours of it going live, I got e-mails alerting me to the site from a conservative Republican, two liberals (one a Democrat, the other a Green) and a middle-of-the-road independent.

The rich get different treatment: On August 11, the New York Times published a lengthy article on Millicent Monks’ new book, Songs of Three Islands, and its painful details about her prominent family’s history of mental illness.

Fine line: Dan Billings writes a monthly column for the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal, two papers owned by MaineToday Media.

Behind the numbers: The Bangor Daily News’ Kevin Miller did a first-rate job of separating fact from fiction in his August 21 story on Republican gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage’s impact on Waterville’s finances during his tenure as that city’s mayor (“Candidate Paul LePage: the Wizard of Waterville”).

Letting Leigh lie: As reported here last week, the Portland Press Herald dismissed freelance columnist Leigh Donaldson after discovering he had borrowed liberally and without attribution from another writer’s work for an August 2 piece about scams against the elderly.

Confused news: Early on August 8, state Rep. Sean Flaherty of Scarborough was arrested for driving while intoxicated, after he crashed his car on Interstate 295 in Freeport. The next day, the Portland Press Herald reported the incident in a news brief.

No numbers … for one day: The Arbitron ratings for Portland radio stations were released to subscribers on August 10, but, in a break from past practice, the figures weren’t made public. The numbers from the spring survey of listeners are being “embargoed,” according to one station general manager who asked not to be identified, because “half the market is not subscribing [to Arbitron] this year.”

Ethical lapse: According to an editor’s note in the August 9 Portland Press Herald, the paper has permanently parted ways with local columnist Leigh Donaldson.

The note says Donaldson’s August 2 column headlined “Increased vulnerability to scams is a disease of old age” (the piece is no longer posted on the paper’s Web site) contained “a substantial amount of content” taken without attribution from material originally published on AlterNet.org.