The Portland Press Herald has been outed in a sitcom – emphasis on ‘com’ – about a failing newspaper.
“We’re not a bunch of novices like in the new ‘Office’ spinoff, but there are some undeniable similarities between our workplaces.”
That, folks, is straight from the keyboard of Connecticut-born Leslie Bridgers, the Press Herald’s “we’re-not-novices” actress columnist in residence.
“Despite the glaring differences between ‘The Paper’s’ Toledo Truth Teller, propped up by a handful of volunteer reporters and its paper-product parent company, and the nonprofit-owned Portland Press Herald with two dozen staff writers, a look inside both newsrooms reveals some notable similarities,” Bridgers writes.
Kelly Lynn, a Facebooker who read Bridgers’ column, asked whether the ‘The Paper’ is “bought and paid for by the Mills Administration like Portland Press Herald is?”
The similarities between fiction and fact are broadly apparent, but perhaps not in the way Bridgers meant.
For instance, IdeaStream.org describes the Truth Teller this way:
“The newspaper at the heart of ‘The Paper,’ now streaming on Peacock, is not a comprehensive recap of national and world events but a local one, struggling and largely forgotten by its community.”
Bingo.
Bridgers apparently misses the point as she compares Ned Sampson, the Truth Teller’s editor, to Carolyn Fox, currently playing the lede role as the Press Herald’s executive editor.
But the comparison is logical, Bridgers argues, because each editor is “shaking things up.”
Bridgers touts Fox, hired after the National Trust for Local News bought the paper two years ago, as “forgoing nationally syndicated columns in favor of op-eds and letters by Maine residents on local topics.”
“In terms of experience, however, the two top editors come to their positions with very different backgrounds,” Bridgers promises. “While Carolyn is the former managing editor of the Tampa Bay Times, Ned was most recently a toilet paper salesman.”
In reality, though, a TP salesman at least doesn’t try to put on airs as a credentialed editor who pretends to know how to, uh, edit.
If Fox is so hot, why is the paper still trailing much-smaller news outlets (wink wink) on story after story (Chinese weed) and continually going prostrate for Democrat Gov. Janet Mills?
And what prompted Fox to walk from a paper twice the size of Maine’s finest to try to oversee the “local” rag that’s actually run out of Denver, Colorado?
Maybe so she could create an in-house fact-checking team that can’t even keep up with its own staff’s repeated mistakes.
And sponsor thumbsucker audience forums – like the one set for Sept. 17 with the president of Bates College described by Facebooker Maine X Community as “one of the worst ideologically leftist-controlled colleges in Maine.”
Bridgers closes out her piece with another obvious difference between the Maine Trust for Local News and the Toledo Truth Teller.
The Truth Teller isn’t trolling for cash – or running “sponsored” Mills-friendly stories masquerading as journalism.
“Please consider supporting the Maine Trust for Local News’ mission with a donation or subscription.” – Leslie Bridgers, Portland Press Herald
