Lisa DeSisto, CEO and publisher of the Maine Trust for Local News, has stepped down — marking the second resignation of a top executive at the news organization since it was acquired by the nonprofit trust last summer.
The Maine Trust for Local News, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Local News, is the nonprofit trust that last summer acquired several of Maine’s oldest news brands and daily newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald, Lewiston Sun Journal, and Kennebec Journal.
[RELATED: Five Months Later, “National Trust” Won’t Say Who Funded Takeover of Maine Newspapers…]
DeSisto joined what was then MaineToday Media in 2012, and stayed on with the news organization through two ownership transitions and two acquisitions.
“As I leave, I do so knowing the leadership team is as strong as it has ever been,” DeSisto wrote in a column announcing her resignation published in the Press Herald on Sunday. “This team is filled with the energy, ideas and passion to lead the organization into the future.”
“We’re not immune to the challenges of our industry, DeSisto wrote. “It takes grit, resolve and collaboration to continue to battle these headwinds, all of which the team has – and more.”
The outgoing CEO and publisher wrote that the Maine Trust for Local News has been “working with urgency these past 18 months to find a path to sustainability.”
Financier and ex-husband of Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (ME-01) S. Donald Sussman handed the reins of the Press Herald newspapers to businessman Reade Brower in 2015, who in turn sold it to the National Trust for Local News last year.
DeSisto said that Brower was a “wonderful steward” of the newspapers, who “made a decision with his heart not to sell to the highest bidder.”
This is the first time anyone affiliated with the sale of the media company has acknowledged that Brower accepted a lower bid in order to hand that paper to the National Trust.
Sources familiar with the sale of the paper have told the Maine Wire that the highest bidder was a well-known conservative media executive.
Although the nonprofit promised to disclose the funders behind the acquisition at the time of the sale, that pledge has yet to be fulfilled. Despite multiple inquiries by the Maine Wire, DeSisto never provided that financial transparency that was promised immediately following the acquisition.
A report from digital media outlet Semafor suggested that left-wing billionaire George Soros and Swiss foreign national Hansjörg Wyss were key financial backers of the National Trust’s acquisition of the Press Herald and its sister news brands.
DeSisto’s resignation comes just months after the departure of another top executive at the Press Herald, Steve Greenlee, who like DeSisto joined the newspaper in 2012.
At the time of his resignation in July, Greenlee was the executive editor of the Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram.
Greenlee left the company to become a professor of journalist at Boston University.
I get the real news from the Maine Wire. Press Herald and related ilk, are only good for emergency TP, starting fires, and seeing what nonsense the other side is up to.
Ditto Bryan
What’s the Portland Press Herald or the Maine Sunday Telegram?
Brower accepted the lower bid so that the newspaper could continue as a propaganda arm of the Democrat party.
I stopped reading the Sunday Telegram years ago because their news feeds are from the AP and other liberal sources. Even their local staff reporters are all totally left biased. I want nothing to do with any National Trust, Soros funded, “news” media nor will I support any of their advertisers. Thank You Maine Wire.
What does not the owners pay well?
What’s the circulation of that pamphlet?
Not very open about their owner ship. What are they afraid of—The Truth.
You can get all the good news right here.
Get rid of ALL non-profits!
“there’s nothing you can do that can’t be [un]done” Beatles.
“The Times They Are A-Changin'” Bob Dylan
“It’s rallying time boys. The tea must go over the side to sweeten the waters for a New America.” Ken Capron