The Maine Trust for Local News, already reeling from a string of executive resignations, is now losing the publisher of one of its largest papers.
Jody Jalbert, publisher of the Lewiston Sun Journal and the Maine Trust for Local News Community News Division, said she is stepping down.
A 36-year-veteran of the newspaper, including the last three years as publisher, Jalbert announced the news to her colleagues on Tuesday.
Jalbert’s unexpected resignation comes on the heels of Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro vacating her position as CEO of the parent National Trust for Local News.
The trust bought the Portland Press Herald, which is the state’s largest paper, along with the Lewiston publication and a string of weeklies in 2023.
Not long thereafter, Shapiro began making budget cuts – including laying off freelance culture reporters for the Press Herald – even as she accepted a huge salary raise.
Just before Shapiro quit, the Press Herald’s publisher, Lisa DeSisto, and executive editor, Steve Greenlee, resigned after a long tenures at the trust’s anchor Maine paper.
Jalbert, 56, started working at the Sun Journal in 1988.
“My whole life has been working here at the Sun Journal,” Jalbert said. “I kind of grew up at the paper, so everybody here feels like family.”
In a related development, the only large paper in Maine not owned by the trust laid off its Portland reporter Wednesday.
Troy Bennett had been with the Bangor Daily News 13 years.
“This is the first time I’ve been without a day job since I was 18,” Bennett said. “Not going to lie, it’s a weird feeling.”
Avery Yale Kamila, among the veteran culture columnists recently ousted by the Press Herald, decried Bennett’s dismissal.
“He’s a real hard worker so he’s a real loss,” Yale Kamila said.
