Stirring the Soup: The Village Soup-owned Bar Harbor Times has a new editor.

On January 8, Holly Anderson – since June, the acting editor of the Republican Journal in Belfast (also owned by Village Soup) – was put in charge of the Mount Desert Island weekly. Anderson replaces Greg Fish, the editor of the Times since 2001.

(Disclosure: My weekly political column runs in the Times, the Journal and other Village Soup papers.)

Until this change, Fish had been the only surviving editor at Village Soup from the previous ownership, Courier Publications. Village Soup bought the Courier papers in 2008.

Soup chief operating officer Ron Belyea said that under Anderson, the Bar Harbor paper will exhibit “more of the Village Soup principles, with the Web site more actively engaged in the community.” Anderson is in the process of relocating from Camden to Bar Harbor.

With Anderson’s departure from Belfast, Steve Fuller, the Republican Journal’s associate editor, has been named interim editor.

Russell resurfaces: Andrew Russell, former news editor at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram has a new gig. Russell, who lost his old job when the Portland papers were sold to MaineToday Media in June 2009, is now writing press releases for Time Warner Cable in Portland. His new title is “communications and public affairs specialist.”

In the first of his efforts to reach my inbox, Russell urges TV viewers to shed excess weight they gained over the holidays by watching exercise shows on the company’s on-demand channel.

It doesn’t appear Russell worked up a sweat writing the release. It’s an almost exact copy of the one Time Warner put out in New York state.

Legislative laziness: We’re approaching the height of the candidate-announcement season, so let me mention this one more time:

There’s no excuse for printing press releases from legislative hopefuls verbatim.

The Lewiston Sun Journal did it once again on January 12, running a long release from a Farmington candidate for the state House of Representatives. Not surprisingly, the self-serving document failed to mention who currently holds the seat and whether there are any other declared candidates. The Sun Journal did nothing to rectify those omissions.

The Morning Sentinel chopped the same release down to manageable size and added information on the incumbent (but didn’t bother to post it online). The Daily Bulldog (disclosure: My political column runs there) put the release on its Web site, but failed to enhance it with any extra facts that might prove useful to voters.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s journalism. Do some.

Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net

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