Maine Newspaper To End 135-Year Run

CEO Lisa DeSisto, publisher of the Journal Tribune in Biddeford, ME, has announced that it will close the newspaper and cease publication effective with the Oct. 12 edition.

DeSisto sent out a companywide memorandum Tuesday morning outlining plans to shutter the newspaper, which was first published on Jan. 5, 1884.

In her note to employees of the newspaper, DeSisto cited a lack of profitability with declining subscribers and loss of advertisers as the main determination in closing the Journal Tribune, which the company acquired from Sample News Group on April 1, 2018.

“Despite efforts to reduce expenses and grow revenue, we have not been able to make the Journal Tribune profitable.” DeSisto wrote to employees. “When we finished 2018, the Journal Tribune was unprofitable. We set a goal to turn it around and in the first quarter we came close to that, but then it went upside down again.”

She said that a number of other options were weighed for the Journal Tribune, such as converting the newspaper to an all-digital format or inserting it into Maine Today’s Portland Press Herald newspaper, but in the end, a consensus was reached to shut down the paper.

In closing the newspaper, six staff members will be laid off and one had previously announced his retirement, DeSisto said.