Portland Press Herald nonprofit owner can’t rule out layoffs

But a year and a half in, the Maine papers are facing persistent financial losses. Freelance budgets are being cut, newspapers are getting thinner, and a succession of senior leaders have departed. Executives said they can’t rule out layoffs or the wholesale elimination of some print editions.

The struggles underscore the enormous difficulties of building and maintaining a sustainable local news business — regardless of who owns it.

Journalists employed by the Maine Trust for Local News, which oversees the National Trust’s holdings in the state, said that while they remain hopeful about the new ownership, they question aspects of its approach. The Globe spoke to more than a dozen current and former Maine employees, most of whom spoke anonymously because they feared retaliation for speaking publicly.

Leaders of the nonprofit, meanwhile, said they are working urgently to adapt to the harsh realities of the media industry in the digital age.

“We can’t say that there will be staffing impacts in the near future, but we also can’t rule out that tough decisions will be required for getting ourselves to sustainability,” said Stefanie Manning, managing director for the Maine Trust.

Founded in Colorado in 2021 and backed by funders including the Google News Initiative and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the National Trust owns 65 papers in Maine, Colorado, and Georgia. A 2023 company presentation said the organization hoped to reach 10 states within five years, though chief growth officer Will Nelligan said it’s no longer wed to that specific goal.

Its deal for the Maine papers came together at the last minute and netted the trust a portfolio that includes the Sun Journal, Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Kennebec Journal in Augusta, The Times Record in Brunswick, and the Press Herald, the state’s largest newspaper with nearly 50 journalists. The only large Maine paper not owned by the trust is the Bangor Daily News.

Previous owner Reade Brower, a Maine businessman, had been close to selling the papers to a group led by billionaire David Smith, best known for shifting Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s TV news stations rightward, according to two people familiar with the deal. Smith also owns The Baltimore Sun.

Instead, Brower sold the papers to the trust for $15 million, according to previously unreported documents obtained by the Globe. Smith, Brower, and Nelligan declined to comment on the deal talks and terms.

Brower said he spoke to corporate chains, prospective local buyers, and regional groups during the sale process, but sold the papers to the trust in part because he felt it would be a good steward and the “dream was always to turn it into a nonprofit.”

“Time will tell if it was the best idea or the worst,” he said.

Journalists in Maine are under no illusions about the need to adapt the publications to the digital age. While the papers had mostly been stable in recent years, they had previously endured multiple rounds of job cuts. The Press Herald, for instance, cut 61 people through layoffs and buyouts in 2011 — mostly in the newsroom. The Maine Trust’s current head count across Maine is 363 employees, Nelligan said.

The National Trust’s model holds out hope for better days ahead. The nonprofit collects donations and philanthropic grants primarily to fund acquisitions, support specific improvements at its properties, and pay the salaries of its national executives. The trust has said it wants its local properties to sustain themselves on more typical revenue streams, such as subscriptions, advertising, and events.

But several employees have questioned the approach and how higher-ups have communicated it.

Manning told staff in December that the Maine Trust lost more than $500,000 in 2024, primarily due to a decline in print advertising revenue even as digital subscriptions increased, a trend across the country.

Some cuts have already appeared. A reduction was announced internally in October in the number of pages in its weekday, daily papers and in its freelance budget, including letting some columnists go. Executive editor Carolyn Fox said the Press Herald reversed the print reduction, though other dailies have kept it, and the paper has named some new columnists from its existing staff.

“For right now, I just implore everybody to think really hard about the work that you do and how it contributes to our bottom line,” Manning told employees in December.

The Maine Trust has raised nearly $4 million for a transformation fund to make structural investments, which have included press upgrades and a new consumer data platform, and paid for consultants who worked on “newsroom transformation work, sales training, and sponsorship revenue training,” according to an internal company presentation.

With the exception of a one-time “right-sizing” of compensation that raised wages for 30 percent of staff, however, most of the trust’s fund-raising doesn’t go toward supporting regular operations in Maine, Manning said.

“It was never the intention that fund-raising dollars would support anything that needed to be sustained as part of our operational budget,” she said.

The News Guild of Maine, which represents more than 150 employees at the Maine Trust, negotiated at least 3 percent raises for employees at the Press Herald and 7 percent raises for the Morning Sentinel last year, but said it wasn’t nearly enough of a bump. Reporters on average make $56,277 in Portland and $43,503 at the Morning Sentinel, according to December figures provided by the union.

Meanwhile, chief executive Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, who stepped down in January, earned $370,540 in 2023 — a 60 percent raise from 2022 and a 218 percent hike from 2021, when she earned $116,667. The trust’s top six executives each made $108,000 or more in 2023.

“Wages for our national staff are entirely supported by philanthropy and we compensate talent that works across our entire business differently,” Nelligan said.

Several longtime executives have left in the past year, including executive editor Steve Greenlee, managing editor Nita Lelyveld, and CEO Lisa DeSisto. (Greenlee and DeSisto formerly worked at the Globe.) Jody Jalbert, publisher of the Sun Journal and other papers, also announced this month that she would be resigning.

“Transformation is hard and it’s disruptive, and I think we anticipated a lot of the change that we’ve seen so far,” Manning said. “We are doing the hard work to create a map for ourselves, but we’re really optimistic.”

The National Trust also has been pushing the papers to share resources and not duplicate coverage and operations. Some recent changes include creating a “quick strike” reporting team for investigations and narrative stories, as well as six new local newsletters.

Nelligan said that while the trust isn’t following the model of a corporate chain, it’s “borrowing from its playbook.”

“It’s imperative that we manage our local operations more closely in 2025,” Nelligan said.

While some employees see value in tightening the relationship across different papers, they said they were worried that it could jeopardize the local voices of some of its titles.

The organization’s struggles have caught the attention of local leaders. Carl Sheline, the mayor of Lewiston, said he was excited when the National Trust bought the Sun Journal, but now worries about its future.

“The idea was that this was going to provide a path forward for the paper,” he said. “Instead, I’m hearing about potential layoffs — which is the exact opposite of why they bought the paper.”

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Aidan Ryan can be reached at aidan.ryan@globe.com. Follow him @aidanfitzryan.