Unretired debt: The Blethens may be gone from Maine, but the effects from their ailing finances could linger on here for decades. Reporter Bill Richards has a piece on the Crosscut.com Web site in which he notes that last month, when the Seattle-based family sold the Blethen Maine Newspapers to MaineToday Media, headed by Pennsylvania newspaper publisher Richard Connor, the Blethens agreed to assume all liabilities in the company pension system.

It would be unrealistic of me to have expected major changes in the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal or Morning Sentinel in the two weeks since new owner Richard Connor and his MaineToday Media took over the newspapers.

So, call me unrealistic.

This is not one of those annoying, whiney postings complaining about how much it’s rained in the past month. That’s because I’m not one of those annoying, whiney people who can only see the gloomy side of the unending soggy weather. I’m the type of person willing to accept that there are definite advantages to the deluge.

Wasser on what’s next: Scott Wasser says he doesn’t really have a title. But the masthead on the editorial page of the June 25 Morning Sentinel lists him as the “Executive Editor,” a position that appears to be second only to editor and publisher Richard Connor in determining the news and opinion content of the MaineToday Media publications.

There’s more vagueness.

Scott Wasser has been named by MaineToday Media publisher Richard Connor as the new executive editor of the Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, according to sources at the Press Herald. Wasser was introduced to staff at the Portland paper yesterday and today.

Wasser had been the managing editor and vice president for news of Connor’s Pennsylvania daily, the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre.
 

Incompatible signs: It didn’t take long for things to get weird at MaineToday Media.

In a June 21 front-page column in the Maine Sunday Telegram, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, Richard Connor, the papers’ new editor and publisher, felt compelled to inform his readers that among the many factors that resulted in his purchase of the former Blethen Maine Newspapers was astrology.

How can you tell an endangered Atlantic salmon from Paul Bruneau?

There are several methods, but one of the easiest is wine selection. Bruneau, whose current address is the Cumberland County Jail, prefers a nice white wine with his seafood. For the most part, salmon are teetotalers.

Connor’s conundrum: For Richard Connor, the new chief executive officer of MaineToday Media Inc., to fulfill all the promises he’s made in the past few days, here’s what he’ll have to do: Serve as editor and publisher of the former Blethen Maine Newspapers (the Portland Press Herald, the Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel), jobs that used to be divided among four different people he’s already dismissed.

After-hours aftermath: When the Maine Legislature ended its 2009 session shortly after 2 a.m. on June 13, most of the state’s media were nowhere to be seen. Even though legislators were still debating such important issues as highway funding and a bond package into the wee hours, reporters for a majority of the state’s dailies and broadcast outlets had already packed it in. Across most of Maine, that morning’s papers would carry nothing on the adjournment and – even more puzzling – they’d post nothing on their Web sites.

Each year at this time, the same thing happens.

Nothing.

With the impending arrival of summer, all news in the state of Maine officially comes to a halt. The Legislature goes home.

A sizable portion of the population goes on vacation.