The New York Times discovers Maine’s Midcoast Villager. Here’s the rest of the story.

Camden, Maine, home of the Midcoast Villager. Photo (cc) 2020 by Paul VanDerWerf.

The Midcoast Villager, an innovative weekly newspaper based in Camden, Maine, got The New York Times treatment last week. But though the Times lavished attention on the high-profile journalists who’ve been recruited to work there as well as the café it’s opened to extend public outreach, it missed entirely the Villager’s long history as a tech innovator — a history that extends all the way to the present.

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The Times article and visuals, by Steven Kurutz and Cig Harvey, are certainly entertaining enough, starting with their portrayal of deputy editor Alex Seitz-Wald, who left a job covering Washington for NBC News to come to Maine. “I did an insane thing,” he tells the Times. “I left one of the last stable jobs in media and took a job in the worst sector of media — and possibly in the economy.”

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A printing deal in Maine boosts the National Trust; plus, updates on fake news and nonprofit news

The Portland Press Herald’s offices and printing facilities in South Portland, Maine. Photo (cc) 2018 by Molladams.

The National Trust for Local News, which is dealing with a leadership transition (see the last item) and business woes, got some good news recently. Three weekly papers in Maine have reached an agreement to be printed at the Trust’s presses in South Portland.

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According to a story by Cyndi Wood in The Ellsworth American, whose presses will cease operations, the papers will include not just the American but also the Mount Desert Islander and the  Midcoast Villager, which is based in Camden. All three papers are owned by Reade Brower, and therein lies an interesting tale.

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