We’ve all heard it a thousand times or more: how social media has supplanted journalism. How local newspapers have folded because advertising revenue has dried up. How some of us can’t agree on what is factual and what isn’t.
And it’s true. “Almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished (in the last two decades), leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to a reliable source of local news,” according to “The State of Local News 2025,” a report by researchers at Northwestern University.
The situation in Maine is similarly troubling. A 2023 study by Democracy Maine states that “about one in four newspapers closed over the last 18 years in Maine.”
We can talk about how bad this trend is for a democratic society. When local news leaves a community, civic engagement drops. Polarization grows.
A 2020 study published in the Journal of Financial Economics even found that borrowing costs for local governments rise when there is no local news source available.
But a lack of local news also impacts our everyday lives. We don’t understand what we’re voting on at Town Meeting. We don’t know what local businesses we should patronize. We can’t celebrate the accomplishments of our schoolchildren or people who live next door to us.
It isn’t all bad news. Many newsrooms are now moving from a for-profit to a nonprofit business model, replacing decreasing advertising revenue with tax-deductible donations from the community.
And the Harpswell Anchor is one strong example of bucking the downward trend in local news.
The residents of Harpswell saw firsthand how problematic it is when the local paper folds. When Bob Anderson’s newspaper closed its doors in late 2020, we felt bereft. We lost important connections. We were adrift without our Anchor.
It wasn’t only the founding group that revived the organization and created a highly professional, award-winning newspaper. We couldn’t have done it without the support of our community. At this point, two-thirds of our revenue comes from philanthropy. Tax-deductible donations from community members account for most of these funds.
The new Anchor has become a model for other newsrooms, in Maine and throughout the country. We receive almost weekly calls from people who have heard about us, asking for the secrets to our success because they, too, want to start a local nonprofit newspaper.
Think about that. We, in this tiny coastal town, are providing a solution for the loss of local news. This is an astonishing fact, and one we want everyone to celebrate.
As Bill Nemitz, retired columnist at the Portland Press Herald, told Down East magazine in 2023: “Local news is one of those things we have long taken for granted until suddenly it’s gone. … My hat will forever be off to the people of Harpswell for resurrecting their paper, contributing content for it and, the hardest part, making it all financially viable. The new Anchor is more than just a monthly publication — it’s the thread that holds the community fabric together.”
This year a new organization composed of journalists, nonprofit leaders and media innovators — including the American Journalism Project and Press Forward — has established the first-ever “Local News Day” on April 9. Local News Day is a national day of action, celebrating nonprofit news and encouraging donations, volunteerism and awareness of newspapers like the Harpswell Anchor.
Currently more than 1,000 Harpswell residents contribute to the Anchor during our year-end fundraising drive, and we are deeply grateful.
During this inaugural Local News Day, we encourage others to join that family of generous supporters. Our monthly circulation is 9,000 newspapers. If every reader made a donation, imagine what we could accomplish. There are always more stories to tell. More connections to make. More recipes to share. More news from the school board. The list goes on.
So, if you’ve never donated to the Anchor, now is the time. Come on aboard.
