Maine Trust for Local News

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing! Matt Fulton Chief Product Officer In his role, Matt oversees the consumer marketing and digital product development teams and their efforts to drive audience growth, engagement, subscribership, and retention. He previously worked in various development and technical leadership roles in advertising and digital media, including The Boston Globe, where he served as Manager of Advertising Technology.

Donna Loring, Bradley Donna is an elder/ former Council member of the Penobscot Indian Nation. She was the Nation’s Representative to the Maine State Legislature for over a decade. She authored “An Act to Require Teaching Maine Native American History and Culture in Maine’s Schools” and "In The Shadow of the Eagle a Tribal Representative in Maine". She hosts her own radio show, Wabanaki Windows at WERU Community Radio in Orland.

A yearlong collaboration with The Boston Globe, this two-day series revealed how climate change and concerns for an endangered species were threatening Maine’s signature fishery and a way of life in Maine. The lead writer was the Press Herald’s fisheries reporter, but the project involved more than a dozen journalists at both papers. The story won the Society for Professional Journalism’s Sigma Delta Chi Award for environment/climate reporting.

Maine’s residents have the highest median age in the country, and this nine-part series examined the myriad issues facing our state’s oldest people, from home health care to elder abuse. Lisa DeSisto CEO & Publisher Lisa oversees the companies that publish five daily newspapers in Maine – the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, Morning Sentinel, Kennebec Journal, Sun Journal and Times Record – and their websites.

Our investigation revealed that bankers essentially wrote a state law that allowed them to then grab millions of dollars of taxpayer money and then shut down the mill that they had manipulated to make a risk-free fortune. As a result of our stories, the state legislature rewrote the law to remove the loophole that had allowed this to happen the investigation won a prestigious Loeb Award, the nation’s highest honor for business journalism.

After the Press Herald was denied access to 911 recordings and transcripts related to a fatal shooting where police response was called into question, the newspaper sued the state. Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled unanimously in favor of the Press Herald, ruling that the public has a right to the transcripts. The ruling overturned a longstanding practice by police in Maine of withholding 911 transcripts from the public.

Our comprehensive investigation of Portland’s rental housing crisis led to new initiatives to create affordable housing in the city, an effort that continues today with incentives to create workforce housing, penalties for not doing so, rules aimed at limiting short-term housing units, and City Hall’s assistance in combatting bad landlords.

Reporting by the Press Herald revealed a serious flaw in state bureacracy that erroneously allowed dangerous drivers to keep their licenses. After the stories were published, the state scrambled to fix the problem and agreed to review 10 years of convictions. Lisa DeSisto CEO & Publisher Lisa oversees the companies that publish five daily newspapers in Maine – the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, Morning Sentinel, Kennebec Journal, Sun Journal and Times Record – and their websites.

An investigation by the Press Herald found a history of tensions between two neighboring police departments that threatened public safety in both towns. The Press Herald’s reporting led to the suspension and eventually the termination of the police chief at the center of the dispute.

Our comprehensive examination of Maine’s opioid crisis reported aspects of the epidemic not seen before and demonstrated that addiction is a disease more than a behavior. Our stories resulted in renewed, deepened attention to the problem and led to more funding, treatment and compassion for people with substance use issues.