Tag: Bangor Daily News

Matt DeRienzo tells us how SciLine is connecting scientists with journalists on deadline

Matt DeRienzo
Matt DeRienzo

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Matt DeRienzo, the new director of SciLine. The project was founded seven years ago to make it easier for reporters to get in touch with scientists on deadline and to dig into research. And facts. The program is part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a 150-year-old organization that publishes the widely respected journal Science.

Most recently, Matt has been serving as temporary executive editor of Lookout Santa Cruz, the digital daily that won a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News in 2024. He has a long track record in investigative and local news, serving as an innovative daily newspaper editor and publisher in Connecticut about 15 years ago. I interviewed Matt in 2011 for my book “The Wired City” when Matt was editor of the New Haven Register and the slogan “Digital First” meant something more than a warning that Alden Global Capital was coming to town.

Matt joins SciLine at an important time. The Trump administration has suspended communications by government agencies that oversee science. Yet many newsrooms aren’t equipped to cover this because they have cut back on science coverage, if they do any at all. SciLine helps reporters find expert sources and gives them the tools to interpret cutting-edge research. Matt has a staff of 14 and the organization seems poised for growth.

I’ve got a Quick Take that hits close to my home in Medford, Massachusetts. A brand-new digital-only for-profit news outlet called Gotta Know Medford is on the verge of going live. It’s the first time the city of nearly 60,000 has had a dedicated local news outlet in three years, after it was abandoned by Gannett.

Ellen’s Quick Take involves big changes in Maine. In Bangor, the Bangor Daily News, a family-owned paper, is cutting back on staff-written editorials and opening the pages up to new voices. Separately, at the National Trust for Local News, which acquired the Portland Press Herald and a number of other Maine papers in 2023, the co-founder and CEO, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, is stepping down. We interviewed Dr. Hansen Shapiro for our book, “What Works in Community News,” and for an earlier episode of this podcast.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Can The Portland Phoenix avoid the fate of its siblings?

The Portland Phoenix of Maine may be on the verge of joining its Boston and Providence siblings in Alt-Weekly Heaven, according to Edward Murphy of the Portland Press Herald and Seth Koenig of the Bangor Daily News. Owner Stephen Mindich was reportedly poised to sell the Portland paper to one of its employees (unnamed), but the deal has fallen through.

I suppose it would be naive to say that I’m surprised. But I am, at least a little bit. As recently as this past summer an insider told me that the Providence paper was struggling but that Portland was doing well. And Portland is the sort of small, insular, arts-rich city where alt-weeklies are still hanging on. In fact, as Koenig observes of The Portland Phoenix:

It long appeared from the outside to be the most financially stable of the Phoenix papers, always keeping enough advertising to fill out around 50 pages of content (newspapers get thinner when there aren’t enough ads to justify printing as many pages) and never needing to follow the Boston Phoenix’ desperate, last moment reinvention as a glossy magazine.

Desperate? Maybe. I think you could also make the case that if the Boston paper had gone the glossy route two or three years earlier, it might still be around.

In any case, I’m hoping that this time the story turns out differently. The mere fact that someone wants to buy the paper suggests that, from a business point of view, there’s something worth saving.