PORTLAND, Maine - The union representing more than half of MaineToday Media's nearly 400 employees says its members are anxious about the company's latest ownership change.
In a Tuesday memo, Maine Today Media CEO Lisa DeSisto announced that current owner S. Donald Sussman plans to sell the company to Camden media executive Reade Brower.
MaineToday publishes the Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal, the Morning Sentinel, the Maine Sunday Telegram and the Coastal Journal. The deal will mark the fourth time in 17 years that ownership of the Portland Press Herald and its siblings has changed hands.
Leaders of the Portland Newspaper Guild first learned of the sale at a meeting of MaineToday Media's Board of Directors late Tuesday afternoon. Then, at around 5, MaineToday CEO Lisa DeSisto sent out her memo, informing the rank and file.
Tom Bell is president of the newspaper guild. Bell, a Press Herald reporter, spent most of Wednesday meeting with members of the union. "This is such new information that our first priority is talking to our members, who, as you might imagine, are very anxious."
To understand why they're so anxious, it's important to remember what was happening at MaineToday Media and the Portland Press Herald before S. Donald Sussman took over three years ago.
"I think what's being forgotten with the new purchase is that the Connor years were very, very difficult for the Portland Press Herald," says Michael Socolow, an associate professor of communications and journalism at the University of Maine, in Orono.
Richard Connor, the paper's former publisher, ran the Press Herald and its siblings for 27 combative months. "He sucked a lot of money out of that company," Socolow says. "And he sold the headquarters in downtown Portland. He let go of a lot of reporters. And he fought with the union."
Enter S. Donald Sussman. The longtime hedge fund manager, and Maine 1st District Rep. Chellie Pingree's husband, paid $3.3 million for a 75 percent stake in MaineToday Media in March of 2012. CEO Lisa DeSisto was hired away from the Boston Globe that fall.
"So Donald basically stepped in, the company wasn't solvent," DeSisto says. "And if not for the investments that he has made in this company over the past three years, these papers and these employees would absolutely not be here."
Sussman poured $13 million into the company during his tenure. The Press Herald hired more reporters. It updated long negected internal systems, adding a new content management system and web development platform.
DeSisto, though, says it was never Sussman's intention to stay on for the long haul. "I think one of the reasons that Donald was so confident in transitioning the business to Reade Brower is that they have so many shared values and deep belief in the role that quality journalism plays in the community."
Brower owns four weekly newspapers on the Midcoast: The Free Press and Courier-Gazette in Rockland, The Camden Herald and The Republican Journal, in Belfast. He rescued the latter three in 2012, after their previous owner shut down, laying off 56 people.
The deal to buy MaineToday Media is scheduled to close on June 1. Proceeds from the transaction will be used to pay off the company's remaining debt.
Tom Bell, with the newspaper guild, says the union plans to reach out to Brower and talk with him about his plans. The relationship, though, has already hit a slight snag. "We're frustrated that the sale is occurring this way - that our contract is not being honored."
The newspaper guild's current contract with MaineToday has expired, but a clause allows the union to keeping working under its terms indefinitely. In Tuesday's board meeting, the union learned that the new ownership plans to impose its own terms on employees, as it works towards a new contract.
CEO Lisa DeSisto says in an asset sale, like this one, existing contracts aren't part of the deal. But she says the company and its new ownership are committed to working out a fair deal for employees.
In an interview with the Press Herald, meantime, Reade Brower added that he has no plans to cut staff or make leadership changes when he takes over in June.