Unsurprisingly, it has been challenging for legacy news organizations to transition from an older, lucrative business model that once served the community well to a sustainable business model that serves the community better. That challenge hasn’t deterred Reade Brower, a leader in local media in Maine, and Kathleen Fleury Capetta, publisher, from reimagining a news outlet for the communities of mid-coast Maine.
They have combined four legacy newspapers serving four small villages and towns for decades — The Free Press, The Courier-Gazette, The Republican Journal and Camden Herald — and Village Soup, an online platform into the Midcoast Villager. It is a consolidation, but Brower and Capetta consider it a “holistic, platform-agnostic united company,” allowing for more in-depth coverage of Knox and Waldo counties and hosting public events. The first issue was published in September 2024.
“Our goal was to eliminate some of the overlap of the four newspapers and do a better job of being essential and meaningful to the communities we serve. We want to improve by making content the centerpiece and the platform secondary. We also need the communities to recognize the importance of what we do and support it through advertising, memberships and subscriptions,” Capetta said.
Unlike many other news outlets, the consolidation wasn’t a cost-cutting initiative but a significant monetary investment. No jobs were lost, and six additional journalists and other news professionals were hired.
In 2025, the company will open the Villager Café in downtown Camden to improve its engagement with mid-coast Maine communities. The cafe will serve food and become a central location for the Midcoast Villager to host events and concerts, allow staff and residents to discuss local issues and suggest story ideas for Villager content.
“We will also start some pop-up newsrooms and probably do pop-up cafés. We fundamentally believe in being accessible to the villagers, so we named it Villager Café. It will be a third place in the community for community engagement, face-to-face conversations and bringing people together in a tangible way,” Capetta said.
Brower and Capetta are passionate about focusing the Midcoast Villager’s editorial effort on solutions journalism. Drew Himelstein has been hired as the community engagement and solutions journalist director, one of the Midcoast Villagers’ new positions.
“We want to connect the dots between the issues, highlight what is wrong in our communities, catalyze solutions and act to fix them. We believe media generally stops short of that next step of ‘how do we address it?’ That typically hasn’t been the media’s role, but we believe that to be impactful as a community publisher, we need to be more responsible for catalyzing action,” Capetta said.
She added that the Midcoast Villager will work with community partners and organizations to act together. Part of that effort is to seek and use philanthropic funding to implement some of the solutions highlighted in the Villager’s reporting.
Newsletters will be another deliverable to maintain a hyper-local focus on individual communities. The first will be for Belfast, Camden and Rockland, with more planned. Capetta said newsletters will also provide opportunities for sponsorships and sponsored content.
The Midcoast Villager is a publication of Islandport Media, which also includes The Ellsworth American and the Mount Desert Islander. The company publishes TravelMAINE Guides and provides other services for its communities and local businesses.
Bob Sillick has held many senior positions and served a myriad of clients during his 47 years in marketing and advertising. He has been a freelance/contract content researcher, writer, editor and manager since 2010. He can be reached at bobsillick@gmail.com.
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