Bangor Daily News: 137 Years of Legacy, Maine News Now: A New Dawn of Investigation

Bangor Daily News Had 137 Years. Maine News Now Is Building What Comes Next.

Maine doesn’t need another newspaper protecting the old media model. It needs journalism willing to challenge everyone.

For generations, the Bangor Daily News was one of Maine’s defining institutions.

Its first edition rolled off the press on June 18, 1889. It survived two world wars, the Great Depression, enormous technological change and the arrival of radio, television and the internet.

At its height in the 1980s, the BDN reported weekday circulation exceeding 100,000 copies. It employed more than 300 people, including more than 150 reporters and editors, maintained bureaus across Maine and printed seven different editions.

That was real reach. Real infrastructure. And an extraordinary journalistic legacy.

But institutions do not remain important because of what they did yesterday.

They remain important by earning the public’s trust tomorrow.

And that is where we believe Maine journalism has developed a serious problem.

The warning signs have been building for years

The decline of print newspapers is certainly not unique to Bangor. Newspapers across America have been battered by declining print readership, disappearing classified advertising and the migration of readers and advertisers to digital platforms.

BDN has experienced those pressures firsthand.

In 2013, Bangor Publishing announced it would close its Hampden printing operation and outsource most printing. At the time, the company said daily print circulation had fallen from roughly 85,000 in the late 1980s to approximately 47,000.

In 2018, Bangor Publishing closed its Presque Isle printing press, citing declining print circulation and increasing newsprint costs.

Then came another symbolic milestone.

Beginning March 6, 2023, the Bangor Daily News stopped printing a Monday newspaper and moved Monday’s edition exclusively online. The company explicitly said the decision was intended to reduce the growing cost of printing and delivering newspapers.

These decisions don’t mean journalism is dying.

They mean the old model is.

And Maine News Now intends to build for the model that replaces it.

There is another issue Maine readers deserve to examine

The bigger question isn’t whether newspapers still arrive on people’s doorsteps.

It is whether readers trust what is inside them.

Bangor Publishing Company owns both the Bangor Daily News and Pulse Marketing Agency. Maine’s own procurement records identify Pulse Marketing as a subsidiary of Bangor Publishing Company.

That relationship deserves public scrutiny because Pulse has also performed communications and marketing work for Maine state government.

In May 2022, the Mills administration itself announced that the Maine Department of Labor, working with other agencies and Pulse Marketing, had launched the Caring for ME campaign promoting direct-care and behavioral-health careers.

A 2025 investigation by The Maine Wire, relying on state procurement and vendor-payment records, reported that Bangor Publishing Company and Pulse Marketing had received more than $2.4 million from Maine state agencies since Gov. Janet Mills took office in 2019.

The report identified contracts involving workforce recruitment, marketing, video production and government communications, including several substantial agreements.

Not every one of those contracts was necessarily a no-bid contract, and describing all of the money that way would be inaccurate. Maine procurement documents, for example, show Pulse participating in at least one formal competitive RFP process.

But that distinction doesn’t eliminate the larger journalistic question.

When a newspaper’s corporate organization is simultaneously reporting on state government while another part of that organization is being paid to advance state-government communications objectives, readers are entitled to ask questions about independence, disclosure and potential conflicts of interest.

That does not establish that government officials control BDN’s newsroom.

It does mean transparency matters.

A news organization should be willing to investigate the people writing government checks just as aggressively as anyone else.

Maine News Now will take a different path

Maine News Now isn’t interested in becoming Bangor Daily News 2.0.

We’re building something different.

We believe Maine journalism should be aggressive without being reckless, skeptical without becoming conspiratorial and independent without becoming partisan theater.

When Republicans control government, investigate Republicans.

When Democrats control government, investigate Democrats.

When corporations abuse their power, investigate them.

When government agencies waste taxpayer money, expose it.

When allegations against somebody aren’t supported by evidence, say that too.

And when we get something wrong, correct it.

The loyalty of a legitimate news organization should not belong to Augusta, Washington, a political party, an advertiser or a corporate boardroom.

It should belong to the truth and to the readers.

Competition is coming

Bangor Daily News has been publishing for more than 137 years. That history deserves recognition.

But history isn’t a business model.

Nor is it a guarantee of relevance.

The internet eliminated the enormous structural advantages once enjoyed by legacy newspapers. Maine News Now doesn’t need printing presses, fleets of delivery vehicles or more than a century of institutional infrastructure to compete for a reader’s attention.

We need reporters.

We need sources.

We need documents.

We need cameras.

We need technology.

And, above everything else, we need credibility.

That changes the economics of Maine journalism completely.

Maine News Now intends to compete aggressively for the stories, readers, advertisers and influence that legacy newspapers once took for granted.

Our objective isn’t to ask Bangor Daily News for permission to sit at the table.

We’re building a new table.

The void is an opportunity

There are thousands of stories across Maine that never receive meaningful coverage.

Small businesses fighting bureaucracy.

Taxpayers wondering where their money went.

Court proceedings buried in files few people ever read.

Municipal decisions made with almost nobody watching.

Government contracts that deserve scrutiny.

Families facing institutions considerably more powerful than they are.

And good things happening in Maine communities that deserve attention too.

Those stories are the opportunity.

Maine News Now intends to combine traditional shoe-leather reporting with public-records investigations, data analysis, video, social media and modern digital distribution.

We won’t measure success by how many newspapers come off a printing press.

We’ll measure it by whether Mainers are reading, watching, sharing — and trusting — our reporting.

Nobody is entitled to Maine’s audience

Bangor Daily News helped chronicle Maine for more than a century. Nothing can erase that contribution.

But neither history nor institutional prestige gives any media organization permanent ownership of Maine’s readers.

Readers decide who survives.

Advertisers decide where their dollars produce results.

And journalists decide every day whether they have earned the credibility their profession requires.

The next chapter of Maine journalism will not necessarily belong to the organization with the oldest printing press, the biggest building or the most recognizable name.

It will belong to whoever does the work.

Maine News Now intends to do that work.

We intend to compete.

We intend to investigate.

We intend to report stories others overlook.

And we intend to earn Maine’s audience one reader at a time.

Bangor Daily News has had a 137-year head start.

Maine News Now is just getting started.