August 13, 2007

Maine Public Radio's new State House reporter is a familiar name to the state's political junkies. A.J. Higgins, who covered Augusta for the Bangor Daily News for 13 years and spent more than three decades at the newspaper, will start at MPR on August 27, covering government

August 8, 2007

From the August 8 issue of the Original Irregular, a weekly newspaper in Kingfield:

"Serving as the town's Emergency Management Director and Fire Chief, Scott Dyer explained at a recent selectmen's meeting that they are required to be prepared to respond to emergencies

August 8, 2007

Eric Conrad, the executive editor of the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, has left voice mail messages on the phone of a staff writer for Down East magazine complaining about the Media Mutt story titled "New spin or death spiral."

Ordinarily,

August 6, 2007

Shipwrecked. The headline on page 2 of the August 5 Morning Sentinel left me wondering if I'd had one too many Bloody Marys with Sunday brunch - or one too few. The story - borrowed from the Sentinel's corporate cousin, the Maine Sunday Telegram - was about famous people

August 2, 2007

My principal source for this story is anonymous. There's a good reason for that. This person doesn't want to be fired for saying something that contradicts the official company line, which is that everything is swell in the Maine daily newspaper industry.

My source

"I think paid circulation is quickly becoming extinct - readers have too many options. Our job is to get the papers to as many readers as possible - and I'm thinking - only charge `em for it if they want the convenience of home/mail delivery."

- Lee Hewes Casler, publisher of Current Publishing,

From the July 25 edition of Original Irregular, a weekly newspaper in Kingfield:
"Members agreed that they have reached a point where their planning and understanding of the TIF program was accepted in the form of a vote on a `final draft' of a document and map."

Planning? Maybe.

Understanding?

Moviegoers at Cinemagic cinemas in southern Maine have recently been greeted by an unusual on-screen assemblage. Before the feature film rolls, they have to sit through a two-minute trailer featuring the News 13 staff from WGME-TV in Portland. While ads on movie screens aren't anything out of the ordinary,

Fred Bever has resigned from his position at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network to hook up with another organization with "public" in its name. Bever, who spent the last six-plus years as Maine Public Radio's State House reporter and the past couple of years as co-host of Maine Public TV's "MaineWatch"

When circulation starts to decline, newspaper publishers panic. They lay off staff, tighten budgets and then waste all the money they saved on dumb ideas. Usually these dumb ideas have to do with attracting younger readers.

In his recent book, "Dave Barry's Money Secrets," the humor writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist pointed out what should be obvious: "[Y]oung people do not read newspapers." But this simple italicized fact doesn't deter publishers determined to remake their papers in a more youthful mode.