The January edition of Down East magazine includes a two-page spread about the Harpswell Anchor.
The piece, “Raising the Anchor,” focuses on the newspaper’s resurrection as a nonprofit in June 2021. The 22-year-old monthly had ceased publication the previous fall, early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new Anchor “set out to run original reporting on issues shaping Harpswell,” the piece reports, with attention to local government and public-affairs reporting and a commitment to objectivity. The community has embraced the approach with robust advertising and donations.
Brunswick journalist Edgar Allen Beem, a contributing editor at Down East, authored the piece.
The article notes the growth of nonprofit local news and speculates that the Anchor will not be the last community newspaper in Maine to go nonprofit.
“This model is replicable in other communities,” Greg Bestick, president of the Harpswell News Board of Directors, told the magazine.
