Fortunes Rocks Beach in Biddeford, Maine. (Photo by Lauren McCauley/ Maine Morning Star)
When reflecting on the year that has passed since launching Maine Morning Star, I turned to those who have been by my side on this journey — my crew, your intrepid reporters — to get their take on what we’ve been doing, what we’ve learned, and where we hope to go from here.
On Sept. 19, 2023, we set out with big goals: to “report on state policy and politics — and how they impact the lives of Maine’s people,” and “hold powerful people and institutions accountable, explaining how their actions affect communities from Kennebunk to Caribou.”
We’ve kept those promises in mind, and consistently strive to meet them.
Unlike many other places in the United States right now, Maine has a fairly robust media ecosystem. With our launch, we joined several strong outlets and reporters covering state politics and keeping Mainers informed.
Senior reporter Eesha Pendharkar said when she first was reporting in Maine for the Bangor Daily News, she quickly realized that there is “really powerful journalism happening here. It is the opposite of a news desert.”
Because of this, we’ve always known that whatever we do, we gotta do it well.
Evan Popp, who the Morning Star recently (sadly) had to relinquish to the Northeastern University School of Law, got right to work digging into stories related to Maine’s criminal justice system, often highlighting the experiences of those inside Maine’s prisons and jails.
Both Emma Davis and AnnMarie Hilton, who moved to Maine to work for you, said those early days learning about the workings of the Maine Legislature were akin to “drinking out of a fire hose.”
But they used their fresh perspective to their benefit, being unafraid to ask questions about why things are the way they are.
Reflecting on her early stories reporting on the budding Office of New Americans, Davis said she “got to learn about how other people were navigating state services and navigating becoming a Mainer as I was also becoming a Mainer.”
And they soon got the hang of it.
Davis, who has a meticulous attention to detail, carved out a niche for herself covering the play-by-play of the budget process, a gorilla of an undertaking due to its notorious opacity, as well as the details of the 14th Amendment fight between Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
She often heard from readers about how the budget stories in particular helped them understand the workings of the Appropriations Committee. “Keeping a really close eye on those bills and each step of the process, I hope and heard from some people it really helped in terms of transparency,” she said.
Similarly, Hilton found a new angle reporting on the state’s failing child welfare system when she started investigating complaints she heard about the agency’s new software system, which caseworkers said made their work significantly harder and more cumbersome.
But more than the legalese and “nitty-gritty policy aspects of everything,” Davis said what has stuck most with her are the times she heard from people about how a specific policy “would impact their ability to live their daily lives.”
In addition to reporting on immigrant communities, Davis also has covered stories relating to the Wabanaki Nations, including last year’s ballot measure related to treaty language, the Mi’kmaq and Passamaquoddy’s research to combat PFAS, the effort to better integrate Wabanaki studies in school curriculums, and the ongoing push for full sovereignty.
Through this work, she has come to understand that Maine is much more diverse than people from out of state might realize, and often a leader on some issues, like pro-democracy reforms and LGBTQ rights.
“You think of Maine as a very white, rural state,” Davis said, noting that there are many more perspectives she hopes “we can continue to highlight and amplify.”
Pendharkar, who was born and raised in India before moving to New England for journalism school, said while she is in many ways “an outsider to what Mainers typically know,” she was “never made to feel like an outsider when I went to report, even in the smallest communities.”
“Madawaska, Bethel, I went to all these tiny places in the course of my reporting, and people were as curious about me as I was about the stories I was reporting on.” But, she added, “the curiosity was never laced with discriminatory intent, which on a personal note is very refreshing, because I have seen many places where I couldn’t step out of the local McDonald’s.”
It is often the case that we as journalists come to know a place through our work reporting on a story. Perhaps most telling is how Mainers responded following one of the worst tragedies in state history, which occurred just weeks after our launch.
Hilton followed the story of the Lewiston mass shooting from the first press conference and manhunt, into the legislative slog to pass gun reform, through the heart wrenching testimonies before the commission investigating the events that led to the shooting.
Through it all, she learned “how people in Maine are really proud of their communities and therefore like to show up for people in those difficult moments and … aren’t afraid of confronting hard things together as a community.”
While she spends “so much time learning technical information and reading statutes and thinking about policies,” the shooting and its aftermath “showed me a little more of the heart of Maine and Mainers, and how at the end of the day, they are people that really care about and for each other.”
Pendharkar, who joined the staff this summer after reporting for a national education outlet in Washington, D.C., was compelled to return because “being in a region that you care about is my preferred way of being a reporter instead of parachuting into different places.”
Between the lobstermen, the moose, the Bean boots, Maine is ripe for caricature. But for people who live here — whether for generations or just a year — those images don’t define us and can often cloud out the very real challenges that people face.
Maine can often “be painted in a certain light of being a really awesome place to vacation, and being really beautiful, and a place where you can go to find a reprieve from life,” Hilton said.
“And while that’s true, I’ve also just been really struck by how it’s really complex and nuanced, and it’s so much more than being just the poster child for a tourist destination.”
As we enter year two, our goal is to honor the people of this state, in all of their tender complexity, by telling their stories and hopefully helping unpack how things work, or why they are the way they are.
So happy birthday, Maine Morning Star. Thanks for reading.
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