The Bangor Daily News meet-and-greet at the Bangor Public Library exceeded expectations on Thursday with a crowd size straying into the double digits. Some attendees even appeared below retirement age.
[RELATED: Bangor Newspaper Company Has Received More Than $2.4M from Mills Admin for “Public Affairs”…]
The paper held its event from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and invited its readers to come meet and speak with their editors while eating pastries and drinking coffee. Attendees were encouraged to ask questions and propose suggestions for what they’d like to see the outlet write about.
The outlet also promised to have their crack team of tech specialists on standby to assist readers new to modern innovations like wireless internet, cellular telephones, or touch screens with complex issues like using their website.
In addition to teaching Bangor residents how to type in a web address, the BDN staff also served the community by prompting police to clean up the homeless encampment outside the library for their event.
Attendees who spoke with The Maine Wire said that they observed police outside the library trying to clean things up. By the time they left the event, they said homeless were no longer lying on the ground outside the library and had instead congregated near the edge of the sidewalk.
Others of the unhoused had courteously moved from the center of the sidewalk to its edge.
When the attendees entered the event, they saw about 12-16 aging attendees, they said.
They had a lengthy conversation with the BDN’s editors, who reportedly downplayed concerns over political bias and admitted that they are frequently the target of lawsuits.
The attendees said the woman they spoke with became visibly uncomfortable when asked to comment on the $2.4 million its parent company has received in no-bid contract money from Gov. Janet Mills’ (D-Maine) administration.
She directed them to a different BDN editor, who they say claimed to be clueless about the details of the funding and maintained that the organization’s advertising and editorial sides are separate and that the money went to the advertising side.
