Independent online journalism for Maine people

The project is owned by Mainely Democracy LLC. It is completely independent of any corporation or political party.

Its first post was published February 25, 2025.

Because I have young kids and certain parts of the federal government were, and still are, actively targeting creators and journalists. Instead of giving people my name I gave them my face, and now that face gets recognized everywhere I go in this state. At Can-Am in Fort Kent. On the lake in Millinocket. At a youth basketball game in Auburn. At a brewpub in Brunswick. On the ferry from North Haven. At Little League games, at Sea Dogs, Celtics, Mariners, and Hearts games with my kids. At my kids’ dentist. At my kids’ school, by my kids’ teachers. At that LEGO convention in Portland with my kids. At restaurants with my kids. I get held accountable *to my face* just about every single day. I chose to give my face to this and not my name to make it harder for people who would weaponize that information against me and my family.

BTW not one person who's ever approached me about this has ever been unkind to me or inappropriate around my kids, and I'm really grateful for that. It means a lot.

Last February I was scrolling TikTok and realized there was a massive gap in Maine’s news ecosystem. There was almost no Maine news video content on algorithm-based social media. Reels. Tiktok. Shorts. That’s where eyeballs were, but locally produced news wasn’t. Or it wasn’t reaching them there, at least. And that void was being filled by creators being algorithmically and financially incentivized to trigger emotions rather than to inform. Which is a terrible way to protect our democracy.

Deeply alarming things are happening in our state and country right now and I believe that the more Mainers who are aware of them, the more who will try to do something about them.

Yeah, everyone is biased. Everyone has opinions. I am biased toward democracy, against autocracy, toward rights, against oppression, toward facts, and against lies.

Because they almost never tell me about them beforehand. Seriously, put news [at] mainenewsroom [dot] com on your press lists! I'm a professional and have never acted inappropriately at a press conference (which can't be said for all 'media' here in Maine). I'm happy to share what Republican candidates and elected officials are saying, and I don't understand why they don't want to try to reach the audience of Mainers who consume @MaineNewsroom content each day.

The primary source of revenue is subscribers on Substack, though for a year it also received modest funding from TikTok's Creator Rewards Program. Combined it's never even covered my family's health insurance bill.

No it's part-time, but a lot of weeks it certainly feels full-time.

I'm a communications consultant who's worked in a lot of political and non-profit environments. I worked for a U.S. senator in Washington for a while. I've kind of always been about using comms to try to help people, just in different forms.

I'm also a part-time woodworker but I haven't made money on that in a couple of years.

Sure. There are a handful of immediate and long-term ways that investment could help grow @MaineNewsroom, and expand its content, reach, and sustainability.

I've declined a lot of partnership proposals on ethical grounds (hawking gear from Temu feels like a bad fit), but I'm certainly open to discussions that would preserve my independence while enhancing the experience for Maine viewers, sure.

It really depends on what's happening that I feel is important or urgent, and frankly, how much time and capacity I have at that moment. I'm very intentional about including visual evidence in my stories so they take longer to edit and to be candid, I've learned that there is a ceiling on how many videos the platforms' algorithms can reasonable serve Mainers in a single day. Which is good because there's certainly a ceiling on how many stories I can produce in a day.

I get pitched a lot of stories, and of course I see a lot of stories unfolding in other news outlets, and others with my own eyes. Ultimately it comes down to what I think it's important for more Mainers to hear and understand.

I write in an app called Notebooks that works on my phone, tablet, and laptop. So I can be writing anywhere. Sometimes I record into my iPhone 18 Pro, but most of the time I record into an Elgato Facecam 4K. I edit in Adobe Premiere.

I'm almost always shooting on my iPhone 18 Pro using the BlackMagic Camera app. I use a DJI Mic Mini 2 for most of my sound, and a Lume Cube Panel when I need on-board light. I use a Moment SuperCage atop my SmallRig tripod. I get asked about the SueprCage a lot, and what I like about it is it basically has a USB hub and card reader built-in. So my mic receiver, spare battery, and high-speed SD card can all be used at the same time and connect to my iPhone.

Occasionally I'll rent gear for sit-down interviews and big events. If I had actual funding I'd buy a Sony FX30 and a pair of lenses. The iPhone 18 Pro is great but has some real limitations.

So I delivered newspapers and started writing for my local weekly paper in high school, then was hired as a correspondent for my local daily paper. I had a weekly column in that daily paper my senior year of high school. I went to college to be a journalist, but didn't so much go to classes as work at the paper. I reported dozens of news stories, covered the Villanova basketball and football teams, and held several editor roles including editor-in-chief. I worked for a daily paper there the summer before my senior year and stayed on as a stringer that school year. After graduation I was took a job running a bilingual biweekly newspaper in the South Bronx because I wanted experience covering different kinds of stories, including the city's recovery from 9/11. Years later I'd become one of the first five "online-only" reporters to be given a season credential by a Major League Baseball team. In betweeen and around those experiences, I worked with journalists just about every day in other capacities.

I have young kids, so can we please just say "Maine" for their sake? Southern Maine?

Like nearly half of Mainers, I'm from away (gasp!). I'm afraid I was raised in upstate New York (double gasp!!). I went to college in Philadelphia and worked in Washington (triple gasp!!!) before moving to Maine for family a few years before the pandemic. Sorry.

Maybe? Honestly at this point what would help the most is a flexible and fast video editor who works in Premiere and could help me edit my recordings, assemble the screenshots and original video clips, add the animations and graphics, and add and fine-tune the burned-in captions. AI generates the captions but they always need work and that takes time. Editing capacity is what's holding @MaineNewsroom down the most at this point.