The parent company of the Maine Trust for Local News has failed to file timely proof of its 501(c)3 nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service.
The National Trust for Local News was supposed to have filed an IRS-required 990 form by November 15 – four weeks ago.
Even accounting for bureaucratic lag time, if the filing were done it likely would have shown up by now, albeit a month late…
The trust’s filing history shows that in previous years it typically met the mid-November filing mandate.
So, what gives? Is it dropping its “non-profit” claims?
Dropping 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status and converting to a for-profit entity is a complex and rare process, but the main advantage would be the ability to generate profits and distribute them to founders, owners, or shareholders.
The advantage of the trust changing to a for-profit business is that it would open it up to the benefits of raising money through capital markets
The trust filed its last 990, reflecting its 2023 so-called not-for-profit status, on November 15, 2024, meeting the annual deadline.
The Colorado-based organization bought the Portland Press Herald and four other Maine daily newspapers in 2023.
At the time, then-publisher Lisa DeSisto said, and Press Herald reporter Rachel Ohm relayed, that the national trust would reveal who funded the purchase of the state’s largest newspapers.
However, that never happened – and DeSisto has since resigned.
Instead, it fell to a journalist from Semafor to reveal that billionaire left-wing mega donors George Soros and Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss national, were behind the purchase.
The Maine Trust for Local News has never disclosed who is paying the bills. Or, more accurately, who’s not paying them.
The national trust’s most recent 990 filing showed Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro as its chief executive officer.
But that’s “old news,” so to speak.
Indeed, Shapiro suddenly quit the organization – which she founded – last January.
Shapiro was succeeded four months later by Tom Wiley, who’s trying to run the Maine papers from his longtime Buffalo, New York corporate perch.
In a LinkedIn post following her abrupt resignation, Shapiro wrote that “the very principles that guided our work – trust in community wisdom, belief in the power of transformation, and faith in our shared stories – now guide me to make a transition.”
The group she left has yet to transition to updating its nonprofit status as required by an entity with enforcement authority – the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
If the trust has requested a legal filing extension, the question would then be why did it need an additional six months to accomplish the task.
Organization officials have provided no explanation either way – or whether they’re dropping the “non-profit” tax privileges – on their website’s list of press releases.
They posted the most recent “news in April – eight months ago – when the national trust announced it had bought a newspaper in Georgia.
Nine months ago it shed 21 Colorado papers – two days after Wiley took over for Shapiro, a reverse in strategy prompted by Wiley’s fears that the trust had overextended itself financially.
Yet Wiley denied the trust was possibly on the verge of changing its business model to a for-profit entity. “There isn’t some Machiavellian, secret cabal,” he told Editor & Publisher in what now looks like he could have been teasing what was to come.
If trust leaders have a valid explanation for missing their IRS 990 filing deadline, one would think they would proudly bring attention to it.
After all, they have an unblemished track record when it comes to financial transparency – a perfect zero.
Here’s an idea – maybe the suits should enlist the flagship Press Herald’s “quick strike team” to get crackin’ on that late 990.
The problem is that that quacker-jack squad is already way behind deadline on one of Maine’s biggest government scandals – the Somali Mainecare provider under investigation.
The Maine Wire broke the story months ago and the Press Herald and its peers have totally ignored it – denial being their strong suit.
Now that it’s become national news, the Press Herald needed to save face so it decided to go into a defensive crouch and focus on the fallout.
Rather than doing journalism themselves, they’re telling us all the reasons this isn’t news.
Perhaps that’s the same stance they’ll take if and when they get around to filing their late 990, as in, “nothing to see here folks.”
