 here again with another edition of Patience on the News, and I have a great guest tonight because he knows how to do this. His name is Bill Nimitz. Everybody in Maine knows Bill Nimitz, a great columnist for the newspapers, and he would make some people angry from time to time. Bill, did you hear from those people that you made angry? Very often. I haven't lately though. Monday was the first anniversary of my retirement. Oh, it was? It was, and I woke up that morning and said, wait a minute. This isn't how retirement's supposed to go, but here I am. Anyway, he became an institution in Maine. I first met Bill. Did you start as a sports writer? No, I started as a cub reporter for the Morning Sentinel in Waterville. Actually, if you go back to my very first days when I was in college, I did a sports writing internship, so I guess, yes, I did. Did you go to B.C.? No, I went to UMass Amherst, and prior to that, a Catholic high school, Severian Brothers High School. Severian Brothers? Where's that? In Needham? Westwood, Massachusetts. Westwood. I grew up in Needham, but it was two towns over. Yeah. I actually met you. You were here in Waterville in 1980. I was at the Augusta Civic Center in 1980, when you were running for Congress. You know, when I was the chairman of the Democratic Party, and then I ran for Congress that year. Yes, that's right. But, Bill, you're one of the few people that know that for that one year, 1980, Maine was first in the country in terms of its caucuses ahead of Iowa, and all the candidates came. Jimmy Carter was the incumbent. He couldn't come, but he was on the phone. Jody Powell was there. Jody Powell was there. Jerry Brown was there. Teddy Kennedy was there. And those guys spent at least two weeks in Maine. That's right. And I remember that the night, probably the night of the caucuses, I remember. That's probably when you and I first met. Yeah. And there you were with Jody Powell and Jerry Brown. And I said, who's this hotshot herald patient? Who is this guy? We were the center of the political world that one day. There you go. Our moment in the sun. And it only happened once. Yeah. So anyway, we're not here to talk about ancient history, and it is ancient. We're here to talk about a column that Bill wrote very recently, and he said it was a call to action to preserve local journalism in Maine. And it was about the establishment of the Maine Journalism Foundation, a non-profit, as he described it, determined to sustain and nurture Maine's reputation as a bastion for independent local news. And you are the president of the Maine Journalism Foundation. So why do we need a Maine Journalism Foundation? Two reasons. One is immediate, and that is that if you live in southern, central, western Maine, and you read a daily or weekly newspaper, a local newspaper on a regular basis, then you are probably reading a newspaper that is owned by Masthead Maine, which is a company that was formed by Reed Brower, Camden, who purchased the Press Herald in the central Maine Morning Sentinel, the KJ, and from Donald Sussman back in 2015. The legacy is the Gannett Newspapers. Exactly. The Gannett Newspapers. And Reed has been a great steward. And in addition to that, he then went on to acquire the Lewiston Sun Journal, the Brunswick Times Record, and a slew of weekly papers that some of which were already affiliated with those dailies, to the point where Masthead Maine is now a collection of five daily newspapers, and depending on how you count them, up to 25 weekly newspapers. So it's all but one of the daily newspapers in Maine. That's correct. The Bank of Daily News is the only one. The only one. So we have to be unique in Maine in that respect. We are more than unique in that respect. In fact, Maine is the only state in the country right now in which there is not outside chain ownership of a single newspaper. The only state in the United States? That's correct. This is a pristine news ecosystem. That's what we'd like to call it, in that everything is independently owned. And the more independently owned and the more local that ownership is, the more attuned it is to not only the pulse of the community, but the needs of the community and a commitment to the community. So we're at a crossroads right now because Reed, as many people know, recently announced his intention to get on to the next phase of his life. And being a guy who just retired a year ago, I understand. I mean, in fact, Reed went to UMass at the same time I was there. Same time? Yeah, we didn't know each other, but he sold pizza in my dorm. I found this out 40 years later. He was the Bell's Pizza guy. But anyway, he wants to move on. But he wants to do it in an orderly, responsible way. So he made it known. Well, we picked up myself and my fellow Foundation members, Emily Barr from Cape Elizabeth, who was the former CEO of the Graham Media Group with the Washington Post. What is the Graham Media Group? Is that all the broadcast division of the Washington Post? Correct, correct. TV, big markets. Bunch of TV stations. That's right, Chicago. She ran that division. And she lives in Maine now? She lives in Cape Elizabeth right now. And she is a pro on this stuff. I have to tell you. And then we have Bill Burke, who, you know, formerly, former owner of the Seat Portland Seedogs. And of course, going back to the founding of the Weather Channel. And he has a very extensive broadcast background himself. And is a great fundraiser. I mean, he directed the Maine Medical Center's fundraising campaign. He was very successful at that. So we coalesced around a simple idea when we heard that Reed was planning on moving on. And that was the news market right now is such that when it comes to newspaper acquisitions, it's very often not a pretty sight. There is a very predatory, in fact, the acquisition market is mostly populated right now. The only people buying come at these things with a very predatory strategy. And that is that they're back, they're hedge funds, they're venture capitalists, they want to pull as much cash out of the operation as quickly as they can to get those instant returns for their investors on this purchase. What that means typically in a lot of markets is the first thing they do is sell all the real estate. If there's a building, if there's a press, whatever it might be, they sell it and lease back. They get pulled cash that way. And then they go after much more significantly to us. They go after the operating costs, which as we know in any newspaper is the newsroom. That's where the people who make the phone calls, who dig out things, who look at the documents and report. Go to that town hall, go to that city hall when maybe no one else is there and pay close attention to what's on the agenda, what they're talking about. If they go into executive session to talk about things behind closed doors, those reporters are the ones who are challenging them saying we want to know why you're doing that, you have to follow the right to no law. Without those centuries, if you will, a lot of these towns, they do now even go uncovered and not only does it remove that watchdog rule that the press typically plays with government, but beyond that it leaves the community in the dark, uninformed as to what's going on until it's too late. What's this development going on down the street here? We didn't hear anything about that. Oh sorry, contracts been signed. It's all zoning board has approved it, planning board passed off on it, nobody knew. So what we're saying is when an operation like that comes in and guts these new staffs, it's too late for the community at that point to do anything about it. They're in the dark and that in turn has ripple effects on the community. People start going to their respective silos for information that is sometimes vetted, sometimes not. Rumors take root about things that aren't substantiated, but as we've seen in the past few years, it becomes fact overnight. And the next thing you know, we have what we have seen, you've seen it, I've seen it on TV here in Maine, even here in Maine in recent months where you have these, these were once municipal board or school board meetings that turn into absolute free-for-alls. We have police being called. We have elected officials being escorted out to their cars because they're afraid of the people who came to this meeting. And this is all, this all breeds on that misinformation and that lack of a, lack of a starting set of facts on which everybody can base their opinions. So we feel like the Mast Ed, Maine newspapers right now are a, they're a profitable business. They're doing fine. And what we want to do is more proactive than reactive. We want to acquire them from Reed, own them as a nonprofit, diversify their revenue streams, that be it through digital innovation, but also through, you know, to some extent philanthropy, which nonprofits can do, and just get, you know, get, get Mainers to realize, number one, how lucky they are. And number two, how they now have an opportunity to protect that and to buy into this and to start treating newspapers not as a private business that's in business only to make money, but as a public service that is in business to inform the public and strengthen the, the democracy. We take all this for granted, don't we? We sure do. We sure do. You said something interesting, and I made a note about it, starting with the same base of facts. One thing about having your own newspaper in town that's local, that covers the local news, that the discussions on the street are what we're all reading in the same newspaper. We read something in New York Column or we read something in the Press Herald, and then we say to one another on the street or in the grocery store, did you see, did you read about this? And we're talking about the same thing. When these predators come in and squeeze it dry and leave a skeleton, we're not talking about the same thing. You're talking about what you read on your Facebook page versus what they read on theirs or Twitter, whatever, and those aren't the same things. You know, those, it's not that same starting point. Not the same starting point. It's like, I think it's analogous to what television was like when I was a young man and we had three networks and at 6 p.m. or 6 30, you watched either the evening news on either CBS, ABC or NBC. Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, or Harry Reasoner. So there were three guys on delivering the news and so at least a third of us were watching the same thing and everybody was, they were pretty much straight in terms of the news. So we were having discussions based on facts. And you know, that doesn't mean, we're not talking about group think here. What I'm saying, and you know, I mean, I was an opinion guy for much of my, certainly the latter half of my journalism career. So I understand the whole, you know, opinion side of the media. But what it did was, as people formulate their own opinions, they're rooted in the same set of facts. And so as a result, you get a much healthier debate because everybody's using the same. And then they have different opinions on that group on that. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, you know, you have people who start out, for example, with the premise, without any proof, evidence, anything that the last presidential election was stolen. And that's their starting point. It's very difficult for somebody who who rightfully believes that not to be true to embark on an intelligent discussion of the facts with those people. So that's one example of the kind of breakdown, the kind of tearing at the community fabric that takes place when people start operating with what they think are different facts or different truths. You know, I'm a lawyer and in a way, I'm in the same business that you journalists are in for the most part. And that is evidence. That's right. Lawyers, stock and trade is getting evidence, finding evidence, digging it out, cross examining people, asking a lot of questions. And our whole system of justice depends on evidence. That's right. And if evidence is impure and a joke, we have no system of justice. It's that system. It's gone. It's we're at each other's throat and there is no system in which we can get along. So it's the same thing with reporters. It is. It is. People think that, you know, you don't realize that over the years, I've always been struck by how many times something that is so rudimentary to me, which is the news gathering, writing, editing, and production, all the whole pro all the things that go into the news product. It's a complex process. And if you live it like I have for so many years, you just kind of take it for granted because that's just your routine. But when you explain it to people, when you explain the vetting that occurs between the editor and the reporter at the assignment stage, between the reporter and his or her fellow reporters during the reporting stage, between the reporter and the sources, then comes the writing, then it goes back to the content editor. And from the content editor, it goes on to a copy editor. And then that goes on to a page and that page gets proofed. And all the way along that process, there are people who, yes, they're looking for typos or, you know, the nuts and bolts stuff. But at the same time, anybody along that chain is not only authorized, but is required if they see some flaw, some hole, something that some evidence that doesn't line up to sound the alarm say, wait, we got to wait, we got to fix this. So by the time that paper hits your doorstep in the morning, that many eyes have been on it. That's a pretty thorough vetting process for an eight-inch story about the town council. And what happens when you turn all that over to, you know, the social media food fights that we now have every day, none of that happens. It's one person sitting down at a keyboard saying, I heard this, this is true, sends it, 10 people read it, three of them think it's true too. They put it out and boom, boom, boom. And without strong local journalism, all we've got left is the social media content. And it's, I call it the babble. The babble. It's really what it is. And that's what we'll have. So let's go back and talk about main journalism foundation. So the idea is to have main journalism foundation, a nonprofit, acquire these newspaper properties. That's right. That's our primary goal right now, because if only because it's imminent. And we know that we need to, we need to... You say it's imminent. We're talking not a long time. No, actually, in terms of our immediate goals, we're talking weeks, not months. And, you know, we need to, our objective right now is to get a legitimate seat at that table when Reed Brower starts entertaining offers from buyers. We want... Predators will be at the table. Yeah, they will. Yeah. And we assume, you know, I don't know that for a fact right now, but I must, we have to operate under that assumption. And we want, and we have had wonderful discussions with Reed. And I think Reed, he completely understands what we're about. And I think he also understands that we talked about the Guy Gannett legacy, and then I'll get to that in a minute, because Guy's granddaughter, Maddie Corson, is helping us lead this charge. But Reed understands the whole idea. In fact, he used the word stewardship when he made his announcement. He said he didn't refer to himself as the owner. He said, I've been the steward of these properties. And I love the sound of that, because it plugs into that concept of public service. So we think he's at least somewhat philosophically aligned or understanding of what we're trying to do. But we need to be competitive, and we need to... Financially, in other words. Correct. Yeah, you've got to have some money to put at the table. So our goal, I'll sketch it out for you. Our overall goal is to raise $15 million. And that money would be used for two purposes. One is the acquisition. And if we're successful in reaching that amount, there would be a working amount left over that would be used in two ways. One is to look at the places in the dailies and these weeklies that could use some shoring up, particularly in the digital realm. We really need to be out in front on that, which in itself opens up new various revenue streams for the whole operation. That's not to say we're getting rid of the paper, the newspaper. The main, demographically, skews older, and we are well aware of how many older, loyal readers we have who want that newsprint in the morning. And we respect that completely. So part of its acquisition, part of it is what I call walking around money, once we're in that position of ownership. David, you're walking around money. You mean money to ensure quality journalism outside of the newspaper? Exactly. And that's the next step is to, we see ourselves as a statewide organization. And there are some non-profit news organizations here in Maine right now. The Maine Monitor is a big one up in Augusta. And they have done great work. And they do investigative journalism too. They do a ton of it. That's really what they do. And in-depth stuff, they've got a great stable of young reporters. It reminds me of the old statehouse press corps when I was doing that kind of thing myself. And it warms my heart to see these young journalists doing what they do. We have some local little paper, Harpswell Anchor is a tiny town of Harpswell, that they lost their paper. They were in a news desert, meaning they had nothing. Then a group of people in the town got together and through their hard work and donations, they now have an almost two-year-old weekly newspaper that is operating well in the black. They're about to hire, they hired a full-time editor, they're about to hire a full-time reporter. So you can see in microcosm, people want their news and they're willing to step forward and pay for it and support it. So in addition to the acquisition, our goal is to support that kind of journalism throughout the state. And that can be through grants, targeted grants to news organizations. It could be toward funding beat reporters, if you will, in areas that need more coverage like climate change, social equity, education, particularly when it comes to civics. I will stress, I mean, I think we've fallen way short in educating our young people about just how the system works, let alone how to get involved in it. So that's our long-range mission. And our short-range mission is to use the Masthead main acquisition as kind of a catapult into that, where we will become a clearinghouse for local journalism support throughout Maine. So there's a lot of people watching us tonight who say, I hope they can raise the 15 million and, you know, I can help them with the 25 bucks. We'll take it and here's why. We are looking for, you know, the big donations. We all know that that's what this is going to take. You're not going to do, you're not going to do one million, let alone 15 million on $25 donations. However, two things. Number one, we launched this just a little over a week ago. We've got over 300 donors online and they're coming in and I've noticed the donations are actually getting bigger and bigger, which is very heartening. But it's the numbers that are important too. We're going to be reaching out. We actually, we are, we have already begun reaching out. I'm going to be having a Zoom call tomorrow with a major journalism foundation nationally, just to kind of start laying the groundwork for what we're doing. That's a process, so we don't expect it to happen real quick. But the first question they ask every time is, what do you have for local support? They are not interested in investing in news markets where people don't give a hoot. If the locals aren't stepping up, why should they? And so what I'm saying to you folks out there who want to help us, but feel like, oh, I can only do a little. A little is a lot, not only in terms of dollars, but in terms of numbers of people who not only care. And there's a big difference between people who care and people who care enough to pull out their wallet and whatever it is. Just type in on the computer, mainjournalismfoundation. No, actually, it's good to go to our website. It's mainjournalism.org. Mainjournalism.org. And that will tell you a little bit more about us. It'll give you some bios on myself, Emily and Bill. And it will have that donate button, which will take you to a fundraising website where you can click on and give whatever, whatever you feel you can. So this, we're not unique. I mean, this has happened all across the country. And there are news deserts all over the United States. And it's a serious problem. It is. And you're trying to ensure, prevent this. Exactly. I see it as a, it's a, it's a binary choice when a news market is threatened. You can go one way, which is the nonprofit route, which has taken root in places like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Texas, California, New Jersey. I could go on. And these are all very specific examples. These are areas where people said the only way to save and preserve local journalism is a nonprofit. Correct. And they're, and they're, they're doing well. So this is, this is a phenomenon. I'd love to say I invented this idea. But I didn't. But it's a phenomenon. It is. We're confronted with this national. It is. No question about it. What's interesting about Maine is if we, if we are successful, I know much like the outside chain ownership. I know of no journalism foundation in existence right now, which would have, have the statewide scope that we would. So in terms of our breadth, I think we would immediately stand out nationally as a model for, you know, this can go beyond your hometown. This doesn't have to be Portland. This doesn't have to be Lewiston or Waddleville or Augusta or Rumpford or, or wherever. This can be, you know, we talk about Maine being one big small town, one, one community. This, this would be the best illustration of that I could imagine if people all over Maine got together and said, we may not agree on everything, but we can all agree on one thing. We value our local news and we are willing collectively to come forward and make that statement by supporting it financially. I want to talk some about, like I know a little bit about the Baltimore nonprofit. But before I do, I wanted to ask you, I printed off an article that I read at a column you did some time ago about the school payroll scandal. It was in December, I believe. It did. Well, I'd booked up December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. You launched this column. How apropos. I needed to, I needed to cut loose. Why not? Why not that day? But essentially this story is about how the Portland School Board was screwing up the payroll. Things were, things were not good at the Portland School Board. And would have continued to be not good, except somebody began to shine the light on it. And put the flashlight and say, wait a minute, folks, something's going on, and it's involving millions of dollars of your debt. A lot of people's livelihoods. And a lot of people's livelihoods. So you and the newspaper shined the light on it. Well, I, I shown it rather, I certainly wasn't at the vanguard of that. And the credit for that goes to the Press Herald. And in particular, the Press Herald's education reporter, Lana Cohen, who's relatively new to the Press Herald Newsroom. And I remember what it's like to come into a city where, you know, you're the new reporter and, you know, you're, you're walking into these meetings. And it can be a very daunting process, especially when, you know, the powers that be are as entrenched as they were in this particular case. She caught wind of this, and she started digging and digging and started writing. And the more she wrote, the more pushback she got to the point where the superintendent and school board chair were not, had publicly announced their intent to not respond to her calls, to not answer her questions, she was shut out. Which is essentially shedding out the people. Exactly. And she persisted. And God bless her for doing it. Because when the harder she worked, there's always, you know, the truth will out. People in those positions think they can put a lid on it. And it's not going to get out. But once people out there knew that this young reporter was working on this story, they started coming. People would start calling her. The side door, the roof, whatever. And she started getting the story from other sources. And she reported it beautifully to the point where, well, as it was reaching its climax, I was watching this from, you know, Giezerville, having been retired for seven months. And I was just standing up and cheering. And I was also at that point, of course, involved with this initiative. So I thought, wow, if this isn't an example of why it's important to have a vigilant hometown newspaper watching these things, I don't know what is. So I wrote that column saying to people, look at this. This is what's at stake here. This is why we do what we do. And this is why, whether you realize it every day or not, that paper is so important to your life. And as we know the end, the superintendent is now gone. There's been new leadership on the school board. And they're still trying to sort it out. Last I heard, I don't know. They're closer to a resolution, I'm sure. But all of that would have happened outside the public view. No one would have known about this. Except for these unhappy school employees whose paychecks were going completely on them. And where else would they have turned? So that's what you're trying to prevent. And I want to emphasize the importance of it. Not that it needs to be emphasized for our audience, because they understand. They're watching somewhat of a new show right now. We have a motivated group of people. Yeah, no, it's true. It's true. They pay attention. All of them. Different political views, but they pay attention. And I want to invoke the words of Judge Louis Brandeis, a early and mid-20th century justice federal judge who had, I think, the best quote for me. I've always remembered it. And it's something that I hope sticks with everybody in the context of this discussion, what Bill's talking about. Brandeis once wrote in an opinion, a very simple phrase. He said, the best disinfectant, the best disinfectant is sunlight. Sunlight, that's right. And that's what we're talking about. Will there be sunlight in our local coverage of events? Or will there be darkness? Or as the Washington Post puts it, democracy dies in darkness. Dies in darkness. So what you're talking about is disinfectant. Exactly, exactly. And it's that and it's also just communication. I mean, it doesn't always have to be the Woodward and Bernstein School of Journalism to justify a newspaper's existence. It's the high school sports. Where else are you going to get that? It's the local, the Portland Symphony. It's the arts. It's so many aspects of our life that one way or another are reflected and reported in the newspaper. It's the life. It's the community glue. There you go. Exactly. It's the catalyst. It holds everybody together. It's the catalyst that pulls the community together. And what you're talking about, it may go. It may. And I guess I feel like the sky is falling in the morning. But it's true. There's not a lot of time, but there's time for Maine to step up and say, we don't want that to happen to us. And that's really, in its essence, why we're here, why we're doing this. Now, you're a little bit different than Baltimore. Tell us what happened in Baltimore is that the non-profit that was created is competing with the newspaper. It's really, yeah. And that's what we're trying to avoid, because what happened in Baltimore is there was an attempt to take the Baltimore Sun non-profit. And unfortunately, that attempt failed. It's a long story, but I'll just suffice it to say it didn't work out. And those people who were most committed to the non-profit model, one of whom I believe you're acquainted with, you were acquainted with. It was a great friend of mine, yeah. Ted Venetulus. Yeah, they said, OK, we're going to strike out our own, and we're going to start what is an online newspaper called the Baltimore Banner. And they're doing quite well, but it's a startup. And a startup comes with a lot of challenges and uphill climbs that you don't see in a transaction like this one we are assuming ownership of an ongoing operation. But the interesting thing that's happened is what everybody feared with the Sun has happened. There was that, you know, right away. Finally everybody. And now there is a very well-worn path of very seasoned, very good professional journalists from the Baltimore Sun Newsroom to the Baltimore Banner Newsroom. To the non-profit. Correct. And so they're kind of re-establishing a new beachhead, if you will, under the banner of this non-profit. And I think in view of that and in view of the support they have from the community, I think they're going to do pretty well. I really do. Ted Venetulus, the owner of the new startup newspaper is the Venetulus Institute, a non-profit. Ted Venetulus, I knew back in the 60s in Washington. You knew everybody in the 60s in Washington. Well, I knew him because he was very rather, Washington was kind of a small town, man. And Venetulus was the chief aide to a congressman from Maryland. He had a Greek name. I had a Greek name. There you go. Oh, he became great friends. I'll also tell you this, this is kind of interesting. He grew up in Baltimore, son of Greek immigrants. And his best friend was the mayor's son, Delessandro, Tommy Delessandro. Tommy Delessandro's daughter is Nancy Pelosi. So when Nancy Pelosi was a high school student at a Catholic high school in Baltimore, this guy was dating her. Oh, boy. This guy was dating her. I thought things like that only happened in Maine. Yeah, and of course they remain great lifelong friends. I first met Nancy Pelosi before she ever went to Congress through Ted Venetulus. But in any event, Venetulus says he found a wealthy guy who was community oriented, a guy named Benham. And Benham had the money. And Venetulus had the desire and the drive. And Benham said, I'm going to make this happen with my money and your vision, Ted. And he did. And Ted Venetulus said a couple of very interesting things that are applicable here and particularly for this audience that's watching. He said one time, if a community loses its sports team or loses, you know, they go away or they never got there. Which we've seen a lot with the NFL and the franchise. The teams move around. He said, then it loses its spirit somehow. It erodes the community's spirit to lose the sports team. And he said, if a community loses its newspaper, it loses its soul. And he said, we fight. Ted said, we fight to get local sports teams into our communities or fight to keep them there when others want to take them away. He said, and it's time to fight to keep our local newspapers. God bless them. It's time to fight to keep our local newspapers. So he, and then he added, we're, to the people in Baltimore, we're not second rate. And we don't want to be second rate. And I think that fired people up. I think it does. Well, he's invoking the same kind of passion that people feel around sports. It's an emotional attachment that they have to their sports teams. And, you know, it's easy to do that with sports because they win or they lose and you laugh or you cheer or you cry. The newspaper's daily slog is what makes them so valuable to people. And it's one of the, in that column that I wrote just a week or so ago, I was, I was looking around for similar inspiration, although I love that quote. I wish I'd known about that quote. Call me at any time you want to call me. Sure, sure. The one that came to mind that I used in the column was the quote from Joni Mitchell when she's once saying, don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got till it's gone? And if ever a statement was true about local newspapers these days, that's it. Because in Baltimore, despite the success thus far of the banner, you lose the paper, especially in communities that are still reliant on the printed hard copy paper, and you lose the press. You lose, you lose the printed product. And you lose all the infrastructure that goes into producing that and delivering it and circulate. All those things go away. And then you're left with what they did in Baltimore. If you're going to start over from scratch, you got to do it with an online publication, which is great for a big metro area where that's the lot of what kind of that, that transition has taken place already. But in these, in some of these smaller towns where your routine is not to go home and fire up your laptop to see what the school lunch menu is next week. What you're doing is you're walking out of the local mom and pop store and you're grabbing that newspaper with the free usually newspaper off the rack and flipping through it when you get home. And yeah, there's the school lunch menu, but here's the town council meeting. And here's the letter to the editor from your neighbor down the street. No, what did he have to say? And you have this kind of visceral experience, which I think Ted was getting at. It's how you relate, how you communicate to the rest of your community. You take that away. It's not only difficult, I think in some cases it's just about impossible to recreate it in this day and age. So for those people who value that, that micro local, that, or even in Portland, just a general regional local paper, like Joni said, you won't know what you had until one day you wake up and it's gone. Joni Mitchell. The most people here are too young to know who Joni Mitchell was. I just read today. Look up Big Yellow Taxi. That's the name of the song. Well, I just read it. No bitch you worry about Gordon Lightfoot today. Broke my heart. Broke your heart. And it said, of course, Gordon Lightfoot was, we're a little off the subject here, Gordon Lightfoot was a Canadian. He was. And so was Joni Mitchell. Exactly. Well, you knew that. Saskatchewan. That's right. If you grew up in Saskatchewan. He knew it. There you go. So 15 million, a lot of money, it's up to us to find it. Each and every one of us. And if any of us know any very wealthy people who have community spirit. That's right. And who are civic minded, this is for them. And if any of you wealthy people are out there listening right now, we want to talk to you. Come to mainjournalism.org. You'll find contact information for myself, my fellow board members. And we are engaged in those kinds of conversations right now. I'm heartened to see that in the week or two since we finally went public ourselves, what previously had been outreach on our part, looking for, I equated it to looking for Bigfoot. You know he's out there. You just have to find him. And so we were engaged in that process. And I have noticed a subtle but noticeable pendulum shift since where the outreach is now starting to come our way. And we're starting to, people are coming to us instead of us going to them. So I know it's a tight timeline. We need to raise a short term. We really need to raise about three to five million dollars in very short order. And I'm not saying cash in hand. Pledges are fine. We are in the process right now of getting our 501c3 tax exempt status. In the meantime, we're accepting donations through what's called a fiscal sponsor. It's another organization. In this case, the local media association out in Michigan is serving as our fiscal sponsor, meaning we can accept tax deductible donations through them. But for the bigger fundraising effort, we really need to have our own fundraising apparatus. We're setting that up right now. So what we're really asking for when it comes to the people who have the capacity to help us in a big way is talk with us. Let us explain in greater detail what we're doing. Out of that, if you feel it in your soul like Ted did, while we ask is that you pledge an amount to us, we will compile those pledges. When we sit down with Reed Brower in the not too distant future, those compiled pledges, I think, will be enough to demonstrate to him that we are going to do this. We're for real. And if we embark then on a multi-month campaign, maybe through much of the rest of this year, based on the response we're getting right now, we think Maine can once again leave the nation when it comes to demonstrating to people how important a component of our community's local news is. Now, some of the people watching this program are among the many consumers of newspapers in the United States who read a newspaper and say they're biased. They're biased and I don't like it because they don't reflect my views. And often I hear people say, I won't read the Wall Street Journal because it's Republican newspaper and it's to the right or I won't read the New York Times because it's a Democratic newspaper and it's to the left. And if you read the opinion pages, there is a point of view and there's some accuracy to that. But if you read the news portions of those newspapers, which is most of the paper, they're just reporting facts, both of them. The Wall Street Journal is very good reporting, excellent reporting. The New York Times, excellent reporting and a lot of news that's important. And people say about our newspapers, I hear neighbors of mine, oh, I want to read that because that's a left-wing rag, okay? Well, I know read Brower and I don't think he thinks that way at all. I don't think so. I don't think he's that. And I think that a lot of that is, it has to do with not hearing what you want to hear. And there is a bit of a shoot the messenger syndrome there whenever a controversial story comes out. But all I can tell people is that we adhere to that process I described in detail before. And we are, for the purposes of our organization, we are heavily at work in addition to the fundraising. We're a small board, there's three of us so far. We plan on expanding that to anywhere from seven to 12 people. And I am involved right now in active recruitment of potential board members. And we are very determined that that board reflect the entire diversity of Maine, whether it's geographic, cultural, you know, go down the line. So all the different things that you're looking to try to get as representative a group of people as we can. I've got three very well-known Republicans. I'm not going to tell you who they are, because that wouldn't be proper, but who are on my list right now of people who at least one of whom, I would hope even two of whom would be willing to sit on our board. We are not about building an echo chamber, be it to the left or to the right here. We're about an organization that will truly reflect this changing state, I should say. It's not, you know, it ain't what it was 20 years ago. We both know that a little over 40 years ago. And we both know that. So where the face of the Maine Journalism Foundation as it emerges from this first phase is going to, I think, impress a lot of people with the breadth. Well, one thing we know, a foundation does not have political views. That's right. So that takes care of that problem. But you know, anecdotally, I want to make an observation here. For decades, Guy P. Gannett owned these newspapers. That's right. And I was, toward the end of the last 25 years of the Gannett family owning these newspapers, I was kind of avocationally in politics in Maine. I was a Democrat. And the Gannett newspapers of the Democrats said, oh, well, the Gannetts are Republicans. And they were. They were. For all the years, many of the years, 22 or three years, that Guy Gannett owned the newspapers, his wife served all of those years as a member of the Republican National Committee. There you go. Didn't bother people. Good history, Harold. Well, it's a fact. She did. And it didn't bother me because I read the newspapers, and I didn't think anybody was sitting around saying, oh, let's change that story so it favors the Republicans. No, they were just asking people questions, taking notes, and reporting to the public what was going on. Yeah, two things. One, what people are reflecting there very often is the editorial views taken by the newspaper as opposed to the reporting. And that's still an open question here. People say, well, how can you editorialize if you're a nonprofit newspaper? And it's a very good question because the rules that come with that nonprofit tax exempt status preclude that kind of activity. There are some models. We haven't decided on one yet. But there are some models, for example, where the owning entity, in this case the foundation, which would be a nonprofit organization, can own a for-profit B Corp, which is basically a public benefit corporation that is in existence to satisfy the public good as opposed to just plain and simple make money. So there are still options where newspapers can editorialize and do some of the traditional things that they've done. We haven't, as I said, we're not far enough. We have very professional advice. We have a guy named Carlos Burrión-Huevo from the public media company who's in very, he actually, I mentioned that deal down in Pennsylvania. He was very pivotal in that, which just closed, I think this past. What's the deal in Pennsylvania? That's where the family newspaper went to the public broadcasting and they merged. He was very instrumental in that. He was also involved in the Chicago situation. So that's a merger of the local newspaper and the public broadcasting. They're one now. They're one in the newsroom. Okay. In Chicago, WBZ and the Chicago Sun Times have done the same thing. Carlos was involved in this. So we really value his expertise here. He's telling us, you know, get in the door and then we'll talk about organization because there are many options. And a lot of them depend on what's best for this market. There are a huge number of options. First of all, there's no requirement that if the nonprofit owns the newspapers, that they have to take an editorial stance on anything. No, that's right. That's true. And in fact, you could invite people with different points of view to each three days a week. Debate it. Debate it. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I wanted to make one other point because you mentioned Guy Gannett again. And I can't tell you how important it is that Maddie Corson, who was the last Gannett publisher of these papers, back going up to the late 90s when the Gannett family sold to the Seattle Times, another family owned operation. Maddie, I can't tell you how endeared she is to this day to those of us who worked in those newsrooms over the decade. We were at lunch the other day. I just said Guy Gannett, I believe, oldest grandchild. Granddaughter. That's correct. Grandchild, oldest grandchild. And she reminded me of how her job, she really is too modest when she talks about the impact she had on these newspapers during her tenure. And what she says is she was the hugger. That was her job. Our job was to put out the news. Her job was to come down to the newsroom and give us all hugs. And she hasn't changed a bit. But Maddie's name carries tremendous weight in this community. She is so universally respected, not just for her work for the newspaper, but for her philanthropy, children's museum most recently. She has done miracles in this community so that when she, at this point in her journey, told us that she was willing to serve, we approached her. Could you be our honorary campaign chair? Because your name alone carries such weight and influence that that would really help us. She immediately said she would. And a little while into that now, I'm going to try to strip her of that honorary title because I am on the phone with her three times a day right now. And she is working the phone. She's doing all those things that she's so good at. And I just can't tell you how much that means to us, how important it is, and how it brings this full circle. It ties us into that rich newspaper legacy that we have in Maine. And to have it spearheaded by somebody like Maddie is just perfect. Yeah, I agree with you. Incidentally, I've known Maddie. She was known as Maddie Jean when I knew her since I was about 10 years old. Because we lived in the same neighborhood one street apart. Okay. Yeah, so I'm a little bit older than her. So I'm a little bit older than everybody, but she's included. Wouldn't know it, Harold. Yeah. So Bill, how it comes together, we're flexible, but the nonprofit seems to be the way definitely this is going to go. Maine Journalism Foundation will be a nonprofit no matter what. And we will be around no matter what. We hope to pull this off if, per chance, it doesn't work out for whatever reason. Maybe much like what you see in Baltimore. We're going to stick around. We're going to keep looking for ideas and ways. But honestly, as I said before, now is the time. If we really want to maintain what we have, protect it, grow it, preserve it, now is the time. And I don't want to sound overly dramatic about that. But the fact is, given the way things played out this winter and spring, we are operating under a very tight timeline right now. So we ask that folks think about this. But at the same time, we ask that you don't think forever about it. Because as I said in the column a week ago Sunday, this is a call to action. Well, isn't it true that there are these predatory organizations, private equity funds, that are in the business of squeezing and killing local journalism for profit, already showing some interest? Yes. I think that's fair. Yeah. Again, I'm not privy to conversations that go beyond the ones we're having with Reid, but I have been watching the news environment closely enough, long enough now, to know exactly what's going on out there. And you don't need a crystal ball to know that they're circling right now. And we need to see where they come down on this. I mean, maybe as I mentioned earlier about the real estate disincentive in this case, who knows? We don't know what it's going to look like. I mean, there's no real estate here for them to cash in on. Squeeze out. Squeeze out. That's right. Yeah. But there are people. And I've always believed when it comes to journalism, it's not about the buildings, folks. Beautiful is the press, what is now the press hotel down on Congress Street here, might be, and what a historic land market might be. That's not the soul, as you described it, of the community. That was a building. The soul is the people who worked inside there, and the people who still work inside that newspaper. And those are the people in this scenario who would be squeezed first. And it's not only unfair to them and their livelihood, but more broadly, it's unfair to the whole community. And they're the ones who are shining the light. Exactly. Making the sunshine that disinfects corruption and scandal, and all the other bad things that can happen in a local community. Exactly. They're shining the light. And as you point out, it can go to darkness very quickly, and it will change everything in the community. And people will be able, people in power will then say they'll never find out. That's right. You know, an interesting side to that, there was a study done, I wish I could remember the university that did it, but they did a study of municipal borrowing rates in communities that lose their newspapers. The interest rates go up. Because the lenders are worried that this trouble could, we don't know what's going on, say the lenders. It's like saying, this bank has a guard, this bank has a security guard at the door. This one doesn't. Where are you going to put your money? Yeah. You know, and it's the same phenomenon. So it does have a lot of unexpected real world consequences when you lose your newspaper. But you're right, the one that troubles me most is the prospect of these government officials, elected and otherwise, who can gather for a public meeting, and I've seen this, in a public meeting place to conduct their public business, and they might as well be in executive session. You know why? Because there's no one there. There's no one there. And very often, conversely, when you have a robust active newspaper, there's one person there, and it's that reporter. I have been a lawyer for 55 years. I've done a lot of administrative law. I've appeared before boards, commissions, and otherwise. And I can tell you, they're all inclined to hide things. It's just instinct to hide it, to keep the public out, and so forth. I believe this is essential. And I'll just wrap up by saying, it sounds like it's about 15 minutes until midnight. There you go. It is. Harold, thank you so much. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it.