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What Maine reads.
The April 4, 2007, front page of the Portland Press Herald
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	MaineToday Media Inc.
Publisher	Lisa DeSisto
Editor	Cliff Schechtman
Founded	1862 (1862)
Headquarters	One City Center, 5th floor Portland, Maine 04101-5009, United States
Circulation	37,776 weekdays 56,722 Sundays in 2014[1] 4.6 million pageviews/month in November 2011[2]
OCLC number	9341113
Website	http://www.pressherald.com

The Portland Press-Herald (lower right) shares a unique building on Congress Street with Bank of America in downtown Portland, Maine.

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram is a morning daily newspaper with a website at pressherald.com that serves southern Maine and is focused on the greater metropolitan area around Portland, Maine, in the United States.

Founded in 1862, its roots extend to Maine’s earliest newspapers, the Falmouth Gazette & Weekly Advertiser, started in 1785, and the Eastern Argus, first published in Portland in 1803.^[3] For most of the 20th century, it was the cornerstone of Guy Gannett Communications, before being sold to The Seattle Times Company in 1998.

Today, it is the flagship of MaineToday Media publications, headquartered in South Portland, and is part of the state’s largest news-gathering organization, including the newspapers of the Lewiston-based Sun Media Group.^[4]

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram has a long-standing and openly stated commitment to fair and balanced news coverage and hard-hitting watchdog journalism in the interest of the public good.^[5] Its work has received national awards and Congressional recognition.^[6]

Awards

On June 28, 2016, the series "Payday at the Mill" and reporters Whit Richardson and Steve Mistler received a Gerald Loeb Award in the "Local" category.^[7]

In 2012, reporter Colin Woodard received the 2012 George Polk Award for the story, "Special Report: The profit motive behind virtual schools in Maine" in the category, "Education Reporting."

History

The Portland Daily Press was founded in June 1862 by J. T. Gilman, Joseph B. Hall, and Newell A. Foster as a new Republican paper.^[8] In 1904 the paper was bought by a syndicate of Maine Republicans, including Henry B. Cleaves, and gubernatorial candidate Joseph Homan Manley, who the paper had previously opposed.^[9]

It was merged with the Portland Herald in 1921 to form the Portland Press Herald^[10] in a sale of the Press from then U.S. Senator Frederick Hale to Guy P. Gannett.^[11][12]

Notable alumni of the paper include longtime Washington correspondent May Craig and current Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley.

On March 17, 2008, the Press Herald converted from its traditional multi-section format to two sections. A brief editorial highlighted advertising concerns and said the other sections could be found online. The next day, The Seattle Times Company, its owner at the time, announced that it was putting the Press Herald and its other Maine newspaper properties up for sale.^[13]

After more than a year on the market, on June 15, 2009, the papers were sold to MaineToday Media, Inc., headed by Maine native Richard L. Connor, publisher of Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, with financing from HM Capital Partners and Citizens Bank.^[14] Although MaineToday originally announced a plan to move the paper's offices out of downtown into the South Portland printing plant,^[15] it was later reported that the company's headquarters would move to One City Center in downtown Portland.^[16]

As part of the sale, Portland Newspaper Guild members took a 10-percent pay cut in exchange for 15-percent ownership in MaineToday Media. More than 30 non-union jobs were eliminated.^[17]

Effective June 1, 2015, MaineToday Media was sold to Reade Brower, owner of a number of midcoast Maine newspapers and a printing operation in Brunswick, Maine.^[18]

Bureaus

The Portland Newspapers formerly maintained news bureaus in Augusta, Biddeford, Bath, and Washington, DC; all were closed in July 2008,^[19] but the Augusta bureau was reopened in early 2012. The papers continue to operate six circulation depots, in Bath, Saco, Sanford, South Portland, Windham and Yarmouth, Maine. The daily Press Herald circulates six days per week in five counties: Cumberland, Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc and York. On Sundays, the Maine Sunday Telegram is sold statewide.

MaineToday Media also owns the Central Maine Newspapers, publisher of the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and the Kennebec Journal in Augusta; and Maine Community Publications, which publishes The Coastal Journal, a community newspaper serving the Bath-Brunswick area.

Editorial line

The Press Herald and Sunday Telegram editorial board was once generally viewed to have center-left political views. It endorsed the 2003 Iraq War, but has since criticized the war's execution. In Maine's 2006 campaign for governor, it endorsed John Baldacci, the incumbent Democrat, who was reelected. In the 2004 presidential election, the paper endorsed Democrat John Kerry, who won Maine but lost the national election. In 2008, it endorsed Barack Obama, who won both Maine and the general election.

However, under Richard Connor, the paper moved to the center, causing some in relatively liberal Portland to abandon the paper in favor of the city's free daily newspaper, The Portland Daily Sun, or for the Bangor Daily News, which made inroads into the Portland market.^[20] In 2010, it endorsed conservative Republican candidates (Dean Scontras and Jason Levesque) in both of Maine's congressional districts.^[21] They were both defeated by the Democratic incumbents, Chellie Pingree and Mike Michaud. For Maine's gubernatorial election that same year, it endorsed moderate independent former Democrat Eliot Cutler, a childhood friend of Connor, who came in second with 34% of the vote.

On October 28, 2011, Connor announced his resignation effective December 31, 2011.^[22] The newspaper's parent company later accused him of misusing over $500,000 in company funds for personal use, and announced that their insurance company had paid the company $538,000 under the company’s employee theft insurance policy.^[23]

Since Connor resigned the paper has moved back to the left. It endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won three of Maine's four electoral college votes but lost in the general election.^[24] The paper endorsed an override of Governor Paul LePage's veto of L.D 1504 a pro-solar energy bill. The bill was heavily supported by state Democrats^[25] and it endorsed Democrat Ethan Strimling, who won Portland's 2015 Mayoral race.

Online

Content from the Portland Press Herald appears on its website pressherald.com.

The domain name Portland.com was originally the Web address for the papers, but was sold to a marketing firm and became a visitor's guide for the city of Portland, Oregon, in May 2004.

Paid anti-semitism advertisements controversy

The Religion and Values section of the Saturday, February 3, 2007, edition of the Press Herald included a paid advertisement from the First Baptist Church of South Portland, which listed the sermon as "The Only Way to Destroy the Jewish Race". This caused outrage in Greater Portland's Jewish community^[26] and led to an apology by the minister of that church.^[27] Two weeks later, an ad for PeoplesChoice Credit Union ran in the February 14th edition and depicted a character known as the "Fee Bandit", which somehow used stock photography of a Hasidic Jew to represent the character rather than the Old West banker intended for the visual representation.^[28] This incident prompted investigations by the Anti-Defamation League; Steven Wessler, director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence and the person in charge of dealing with hate crimes in the state; and the Jewish Community Alliance. The newspaper's management later apologized for printing the advertisements in question without checking them first, and said it they would scrutinize ad content better in the future.^[27][29][30]

Prices

The Press Herald daily price is $1.80. The Sunday Telegram price is $2.80 in southern and coastal Maine and $3.30 elsewhere. Digital subscriptions are $9.99 per month plus tax.^[31]

References

External links

• 
  Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram website


• MaineToday.com


• 
  Today's Portland Press Herald front page at the Newseum website