Pressure of Truth
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Outlet profile

Portland Press Herald

U.S. center-left (editorial page); news coverage mainstream regional

Owned byOwned by the Maine Trust for Local News, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Local News, a Colorado-based nonprofit. The Trust bought it in 2023 from Reade Brower, who had owned it since 2015.
FundingA mix of print and digital subscriptions, advertising, and philanthropy. The parent nonprofit has raised money from foundations such as Knight, MacArthur and the Gates Family. It has also had financial and governance problems, including leadership turnover and a reported missed IRS filing deadline.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The Press Herald was formed in 1921 when the Portland Daily Press and the Portland Herald merged, and it later became the flagship of the Guy Gannett newspaper group. In the 2010s financier S. Donald Sussman, a Democratic donor and ex-husband of U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, bought it and its sister papers (later MaineToday Media). He handed control to businessman Reade Brower in 2015, and the papers were later renamed Masthead Maine. In 2023 Brower sold most of Maine's daily papers, including the Press Herald, to the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit co-founded in 2021 by Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro that buys papers outright. The Trust has since expanded to other states, including a Vermont purchase that closed in September 2026. Its broader operations have drawn scrutiny, including a 2025 leadership shake-up covered by Poynter, and top Press Herald executives left after the acquisition. The conservative Maine Wire has criticized the paper's owner over a missed IRS filing deadline. The editorial board has taken strong anti-Trump positions, including a June 2020 editorial headlined 'To President Trump: You should resign now.' Its news reporting follows standard regional-newspaper practice with a heavy focus on Maine, but critics on the right see a liberal tilt. The editorial page is generally center-left.

Sources

  1. Sale of Maine newspapers to national nonprofit is finalized (Portland Press Herald)
  2. Maine Is Becoming a Laboratory for Nonprofit News (Nieman Reports)
  3. Portland Press Herald (Wikipedia)
  4. MaineToday Media (Wikipedia)
  5. What went wrong at the National Trust for Local News? (Poynter)
  6. Portland Press Herald calls for Trump to resign as he prepares to visit Maine (Boston Globe)
  7. Portland Press Herald's Owner Misses IRS 'Nonprofit' Filing Deadline (The Maine Wire)
  8. National Trust for Local News to buy five Vermont newspapers (Boston Globe)

Profile compiled 2026-10-07; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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