 We're on the air once again with another edition of Patience on the News, still doing Zoom, works pretty well, hope it works well for everybody at home. Again, I'm Harold Patience. I've been hosting this show for I think 14 years. We've had maybe 125 or so different guests and shows and it's always very interesting and something very much different tonight. We don't have a politician. We don't have a news maker, we have a news reporter and I'm happy to welcome to the show Marion McHugh who is the owner of the Portland Phoenix. There was another Portland Phoenix years ago but now we have a Phoenix, a reborn Phoenix that came into existence last year. Marion is a veteran of the news business and among the other things was a long time editor and owner of the forecaster, which a lot of people are familiar with and they're gonna be very familiar with the Phoenix that we're gonna discuss. Welcome Marion. Thank you so much, Harold. So Marion, you've been in the newspaper, we're gonna get to the Phoenix but you've been in the newspaper business a long time and tell me how you got into it. Were you a journalism major? Well, you know, Harold, I always just loved the newspaper business. When I was in high school, when I was in college, out in the Midwest, the first thing I did almost was go down to the office of the daily cardinal which is the University of Wisconsin because I wanted to join the newspaper. I just love to find out what's going on in the world. I'm kind of endlessly curious. So I got into the business and I've just always been interested in it and then eventually came back to Maine through after various experiences in New York on magazines and whatnot and got involved with the forecaster. So I'm very interested in local news and I think local news is where the Phoenix is really going to take off right now. So... Well, we're gonna talk a lot about that. So you, so everybody knows, you're a native of this area, you grew up here and then you went off to the University of Wisconsin and you didn't come back for a while, huh? Right. And you had a career in journalism and then you decided you'd like to come home. Exactly, exactly right. Well, that's great and we're glad you're home. Now, let's talk... We're gonna talk about journalism generally and about the Phoenix, but why don't you just tell us a little bit about the Phoenix? Some people remember when we had, as many several New England cities had, including Boston, a Phoenix newspaper which was a so-called alternative newspaper, a weekly free newspaper. And then it went out of business and you, among other things, owned and ran the forecaster for a long time. It was very successful. Then you sold it to the Lewiston Sun Journal and now you're back in business and with a new newspaper, which is the New Phoenix. And tell us why, what you thought was missing? What you thought you could do with the New Phoenix? Well, I guess you could conclude from that. I just can't stay out of the newspaper business, which I think would be fair enough. I think the old Phoenix is the Phoenix in Boston. It was the time of the rebellion and the Vietnam War and those papers were very much a part of that time. And then, as you said, the Phoenix had various iterations and then the Phoenix that was most recently in Portland was part of that group. Although I don't think Steve Mindick, the original founder, I'm not sure he was very closely involved with that. It was owned by someone else. And then it went out of business in February 2019 and they just weren't, I think, hitting their mark in terms of the news they were providing. And I felt with my longtime business partner, Karen Wood, that this was perhaps an opportunity to bring the paper back, but in a very different form that was more geared towards real local news and not filtering local news or news stories through a prism of ideology, but following what were the interesting stories and stories that aren't gonna be told by the monopoly media, main today media. And we thought we could do that, but we wanted to keep the strong things for which the Phoenix was famous, the arts coverage. We have a lot of the best Phoenix writers from Sam Feifel and Megan Grumbling and others. And Ed Beam, also one of the premier arts writers in Maine, still doing strong arts coverage, which was a strong carryover, but we also wanted to have a strong comment and opinion section, but segregated more onto opinion pages and not necessarily influencing the news coverage that we were trying to provide, which would focus on things in Portland and in this general area locally that other papers weren't covering. So for example, we have a daily newspaper for a long time. It seems to me, and much of this reflects the changes in the field of journalism over the past several years with the digital editions and so forth, but they've all had some financial difficulty that the regional dailies have. And a lot of it, it seems to me, a lot of people still read the daily newspapers and communities our size, basically for three things, sports, they get the local sports, and particularly not during the COVID period, but particularly when we're not shut down, high school sports are very big with these regional dailies. Obituaries, obituaries are very big attraction to the regional dailies and crime. A lot of crime, obits and sports. So you're not trying to duplicate that, is that right? No, not at this point. We're very limited as a startup. In terms of our personnel, I've got two reporters and a lot of freelance help. So we're not doing that, but you're certainly right on the mark. I mean, I can't see us doing sports but some of the stronger new weeklies that have started like seven days over in Vermont, which is in Burlington, which is kind of a model for us, very successful. They're doing obituaries, so eventually. But right now we're trying to use our resources to cover, to really cover the local news and provide coverage that the press herald that those papers are not gonna provide because they're essentially all one paper now. The forecaster isn't separate. Forecaster stories and sun journal stories will all appear in the press herald. So there's not a distinction. It's all one thing and we're trying to be independent and do our own independent newspaper. Well, you said a different form local news. You're trying to give people the local news and you said not through the prism of ideology. Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, I think sometimes in some papers and maybe somewhat the previous Phoenix, a news story would be printed and it would sort of assume that you would try to tell you how to think about the story or assume that you had the same point of view about the story. I mean, I think we wanna do analysis, we wanna do interpretation. But I'm just sort of, as I said, I've sort of this old fashioned, I've been in the news business a long time and I'm used to just putting news out there because I think what people really want is information and they wanna know what's going on but you're absolutely right. They pick up papers for those reasons that you mentioned, obituaries and sports among other things, it's true. But we wanna give people, we have the freedom maybe to focus that the Press Herald has to cast a very wide net and even though they have a tremendous amount of resources they're covering a lot of bases and we try to stay local and cover some stories that they're not getting to. We were the only paper, the first paper to be really covering the Police Citizen Review Subcommittee which is now the focus of a lot of discussion and issues on whether to what extent there's gonna be civilian oversight of the police department and checking on those things that maybe aren't getting covered in the daily. So how do you, you're the editor. So I know what editors do. I used to work for the Portland Press Herald at one time for a very short time when I was in between the US Navy and law school but I know the editors thinking about ideas saying to reporters, look, we gotta find out about this. I'm curious about this or whatever. So you do that. And you read the local newspaper trying to figure out what they're covering and then you what, you just have ideas about things that you folks should cover? Yes, and I'm very fortunate that I also have a very skilled managing editor, Mo Melsack who's working with us who also has a lot of experience at the forecaster and also many other papers. And he comes up with a lot of ideas also. So, and we get ideas from our whole staff. I mean, the salespeople may be out on the trail and they say, look, look what's happening down here. There's a lot going on at Thompson's Point. What should we do with that? And ideas can come from everywhere. I try to think of a few, but you're right. I am reading the Portland paper very, very faithfully. And Bangor too, because Bangor, of course, is also in this market in its own way. So it's kind of an interesting. It is in the market, isn't it? And actually, when you think about it, the Boston Globe is, but not with local news. I mean, you're not gonna find out much about Maine or obituaries or whatever, by reading the Globe. But you're right about the Bangor dailies. So as you look ahead and you now have this new enterprise and you think about looking down the road, the newspaper business and how it has been changing. Do you think about how it might change some more and how that affects what you're doing? Well, if I could really give a good answer to that, I think I might go into the consulting business or something that's very hard to see. But I guess I've had the belief that even as things, as information and news migrates to online, which, that there's still a role for the newspaper as, for reading in the newspaper. We have a very good online website, but I know we were talking about this the other day, but I think for a lot of people and for presenting advertising, I think a newspaper that you can pick up free is a good way to fulfill the needs of the advertiser. And I guess it's sort of back to the future or something that I think that we may go back to some of those things. I mean, things have definitely changed and shifted, but I'm not sure. I mean, I think online, for me, when I read a story, it's easier for me maybe just the way my reading works to really grasp the story and read it more fully if I'm reading in a paper format. Most for many people and younger people, that's not true, which is why it's really important that we've also promoted our online site because we have to do both those things. So you have to mix both those things, but I'm really not smart enough to know where it's all going, but we know that people will always need news. You know that if you're neighbor in your example, if Mr. Jones did pass away and if we were still in the age of having funerals, you'd wanna know where to go and how to pay your respects. You should wanna know where the council meeting is and what they're considering. And most of that is local. I think most of that is really local. So there is, you cover, in a sense, you cover local politics, you cover what's happening at town hall, city hall, you cover what's happening with the councils. And what about state issues? Things that might be happening in Augusta? Well, we do also try and pay attention for that. And this is where we, I'm happy to link ourselves also. And if we have a model at all, it was the main times. Although we're not a statewide paper and financially, I think that wouldn't work as well. We do have Doug Rooks, who is a former editor of the main times, who is happily doing a lot of freelance stories for us, trying to pay attention to the state house, and especially how that will affect people in our area. So we've got some pretty good, he's working on a big freelance story now that will be out next week, not this week, that we're looking forward to. Because we don't wanna ignore that, definitely. And again, as always, you're trying to find it. Nitch, if you, one thing you like to write a story that the daily newspaper has missed or hasn't had the resources to cover. And sometimes you can find, I suppose, a story in the local newspaper that's kind of superficial, and you can decide if we're gonna dig into this a little. Do you ever do that? See something that they cover and say, let's get into this a little and see what we can reveal. Yeah. So, all right, so you're creating and have created, and you've done it before, a newspaper full of news that people in this region would be interested in knowing about, basically. I hope so. So, how do you distribute it? I mean, you can produce a paper, but the key is getting it into the hands of readers. So, tell me about that, that intrigues me a little. Tell me about how this newspaper gets distributed. I see, you might put it in a newsstand, I work at One City Center, so it might turn up in the news center there, but in the little newsstand, but how do you get it out to a lot of people? Well, we work with a, this is where there is a bit of a symbiosis or something with the folks at Maine Today Media. They run the operation, essentially, that distributes a lot of the free weeklies because they have the forecaster now, and also other weeklies, so we actually pay them to distribute our paper. And the biggest, we're getting rid of, in the Forest Avenue, Hanna-Fords, which is one of our big distribution points, we can't even keep them on the stands, we're getting rid of a lot of them, but it has been a challenge, of course, with this pandemic because a lot of some places don't really want us anymore in their stores, and of course, people for a long time, it's changed a bit now, weren't going to the stores as much and might not see us, but I think that's changed a bit. So we do rely on, we work with them, and we're appreciative that the Maine Today Media that we're using their distribution, so. So for the first time in your long journalism career, you're learning how to put out a newspaper during a pandemic, very good information to have. You're learning a lot. Yeah, it's, you worry most about your people because we weren't in the office at the beginning and now we're in the office somewhat, and it's a worry that any of your folks are gonna come down with it, or that we're doing, and that's a worry. The covering Zoom meetings, I don't know how many meetings you're watching of your local council or anything these days, but the Zoom formats and dealing with the Zoom formats are challenging for our reporters like Colin and Elizabeth. I hope, I think they're gonna have a great temptation in these small towns and in Portland to stay with the Zoom formats because I think it might be much easier for them. I kind of hope they don't, but we'll see. Obviously they have to now, but it is challenging, and the world, we started, we undertook this in April of 2019, and we had our actual launch in November of 2019, and when you think back, the world was so much different. We couldn't have contemplated this, but we don't have a choice, we just wanna continue. We don't have a choice, but to continue really, and we're, I agree, and we talked a little before. I think things are gonna come back, it may take till summer and fall, but I think things are going to come back pretty well in this calendar year, so it gives me, I happen to be an optimist by nature, but it gives me perhaps reason for optimism. So in the past, Marion, a lot of these, almost every alternative, so-called alternative newspaper from back in the 70s and 80s and 90s did have an ideological prism. You mentioned the phrase, ideological prism. Almost everyone did, and still, I don't know, is The Ballard still a competitor of yours? Yeah, it's become the mainer, it's run by Chris Busby still, but yeah, they do a lot of online stuff, and he publishes every month, I believe, yeah. I think he does a pretty good job. I've read some of this stuff, but they have an ideological prism, I think. And I'm not asking you to comment, I'm just telling you what I think. So do you think that it's somewhat unique for, well, you're a weekly, there are a lot of weeklies around, not to have an ideological prism, not to see things through an ideological prism, not to have that kind of a bias. The forecaster seems to be never had a bias of that kind, political bias. Right, and it became successful. I certainly wanna do editorials, and we have commentators that are commenting from a pretty uniform left of center perspective, which I'm certainly comfortable with. I just don't want news stories to be written to reflect what the writer thinks should promote his or her ideology, I think. Peter Cox in his book about the main times writes a lot about training the reporters who were trying to, and that was certainly a paper that you might characterize as having an ideological perspective. Certainly liberal, but mainly mostly environmental. Training reporters who felt that their perspective and their take on the issue or the story was so important that it was, it got ahead of the facts. And Peter Cox writes about trying to train the reporters not to do that and simply to be fair. I mean, any reporter has ideology, has perspective, has opinion, there's nothing, objectivity is really not a, is a bygone standard, I think. But you do have to be fair and you do have to be honest and your relationship with your readers has to be telling them the truth and not what you think will lead them in the direction of a certain ideology or point of view. Well, that's, did you major in journalism at the University of Wisconsin? No. Yeah, that's all right, that's fine. But you've been a journalist, you're an adult wife, right? Well, even as a sub-adult, I really, when I started out, as I mentioned, I went out down to the daily Cardinal, which was, and this was Madison, a very radical campus starting in 1970. And believe me, it was a radical paper and it was all, it was certainly a very strong anti-war focus and all that, and you know, it was still, and that's where I really felt like I got a lot of training. And then I went after Madison, I worked on a magazine in New York, which was also a very left of center enterprise. It was a collective called Seven Days. And one of the people on the collective was Dave Dellinger. Oh, okay, yeah. All right, so yeah, the real McCoy, yeah. So I do come from that, I just wanna respect the reader and give them information. So the reason I asked you about your background in journalism is we seem to be in a different place. I'm older than you and I've been around a long time. I've been kind of in and out on the fringes of journalism for a very long time. It is very difficult to be fair and honest and people seem to be more passionate now about politics and political events. Then they have been probably since the days of the Civil War, since the mid 19th century. It has happened before. It's happened at the beginning of the 19th century. It happened at the time of the Civil War. It's happened in various epochs of American history. But now we're dealing with social media and what Kellyanne Conway called alternative facts. So you talked about facts, you wanna bring people facts and there are a whole lot of people, hopefully not your readers, but a whole lot of people in this country who say there's no such thing as a fact. Now I'm a lawyer, I deal in evidence, but there's a whole lot of people. This scares the hell out of me. There's a whole lot of people that don't think there's such a thing as a fact and so there's some people that might say, hmm, Marion is real optimist. She wants her reporters to deal with the facts. Facts, what are those? You wanna comment on that? Well, that's tricky, you're absolutely right. This is a very tough, polarized environment and I don't know. People are selecting their own facts as Moynihan warned that you couldn't do. So I don't know, I think we just have to hope that the news media who exist and become respected and continue, something like the Washington Post papers that you can really admire. Hold their ground and still are able to publish because the information that they've just published, especially in the last couple of days, running, airing a tape of Trump's lecture to the Secretary of State down in Georgia. I mean, that role of the Fourth Estate is so important and we can't lose that. And we're a long way from getting to that point here at the Phoenix, but we do need to still aspire to that. We can't give up to the role of social media, but you're absolutely right. And it's, I mean, I spend probably too much time looking up things, checking things on Facebook and maybe Twitter and you do get a lot of information. But there's so much stuff out there that's really not helpful that it's really, it is unfortunate. And so I hope we move away from that, but I'm not smart enough to see how it's gonna happen or what the impact will be. As I said, I tend to be an optimist and I only know how to do what I'm doing here because it's all, it's the only journalism experience I've had. So, but the change in the world, when you look back, even at TV programs or things going on in the 90s and what that world was like sort of before the hit of social media, it's really quite striking how much the world has changed. So, when you think about stories that you think would be of interest to your readers, you know, the obvious is they are always, well, what's happening in city government? What are they doing? What are they trying to do? Cause everybody, it affects everybody so they're interested in it. But what about people? So we read about people, I read about people in the Portland Press Herald and I wanna know more about them. And so do you do any pieces about people telling us here's what makes this person tick? This is an interesting, this person is saying something interesting. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned earlier an example we wrote about the new chairman of the chairperson chair of the school committee in Portland and interviewed her to get her thoughts and aspirations because she had had a pretty high political profile when she took on that job, unlike probably previous super intent, I'm sorry, chairs of the school committee. So we did write about her and that's a good example but we need to do more about that. We need to be thinking of those people who are interesting in doing things and finding them. I mean, it's really in the last four or five months things, it's just been a very quiet time. People are hunkered down, they're doing their job, they're staying at home, it's been a hard time to, it's just, I don't know, maybe the story ideas and finding people to write about, maybe it's been a little harder but among the many things we need to do to improve, I think that's really a good example is writing about people because people are always interesting to read about which is why obituaries are interesting, reading about people and people's lives. It's, I read that piece in your newspaper about the chairman of the school committee. I found it very interesting because everybody comes as advertised and that woman who I do not know, she and her husband came a few years ago and I'm a former politician so I kind of noticed them and they were noticeable and I had a bias. I happen to be a Democrat and I'm sure they are too and they would review themselves as quote progressives. I don't view myself as anything and I'm not tea party, I'm not socialist, I don't, you can't give me a name. So I just part of a very broad political party but I read that piece about her and it eliminated most of my biases. First of all, she's a very well educated woman and clearly a very articulate woman. Third, I had noticed her husband more than her but she said she should not be viewed to the prism of her former husband and that helped me to understand her a little bit. So that kind of story I think is very valuable. It was very valuable to me and I'm sure there are many things I don't agree with her on but having the opportunity to read a newspaper story that tells me something about her and I think is very, very helpful, helpful to all of us, frankly. So the other thing that I was wondering about in terms of the newspaper business and your end of the newspaper business is how do you avoid doing people pigeonholing you, say, look, I know some people that are very conservative. I happen to know them. I know one guy who's extremely conservative. I correspond him with them from time to time. Very smart guy and one of the better writers that I've run across. And he actually occasionally puts his far right screeds in the press hero and he's good and he's smart. And as we're talking, I wonder I wonder whether he would read your newspaper or whether he'd say, oh, no, it's just lefty propaganda because I think he thinks most newspapers are lefty propaganda. I don't think he thinks that in any newspapers that are not propaganda, maybe things break apart is not propaganda, I don't know. But what I'm saying, give me a reason why you should read your newspaper. Well, I- That's a good question, isn't it? It's a very good- You stunk honey. Again, we're just, and I, you know, the Phoenix as it exists now, I hope in a year when we're two years in, we'll have a lot more, we'll be providing a lot more than we've been able to do now but I would hope that he'd be interested in finding in the local coverage. We're gonna be expanding our local coverage in certain ways that are still in the works and that I don't know if he's interested in the arts. I certainly hope that the opinion page, even though our present writers, I don't, I'm not sure you can, they probably lean sort of left of center, but maybe there's a dialogue that he could engage there. But that's a very challenging question, Harold. Yeah, no, it- I would hope that he could. Well, so do I, but you have to somehow demonstrate to him that you can do a story that is not one that just appeals to one group of people, you know, that, you know, I was thinking about this the other day, have you interested in what you think? Because you run the newspaper. We read a lot about, I read in your newspaper, a piece which talked about the cruise ships, I think I wrote it down actually, the cruise ships development, you know, developers coming into Portland, the building, here it is, the building boom, this is what your reporters wrote this piece, and the building boom, the problem of homelessness and the impact of the cruise industry. Now, I knew that was in the first paragraph. I knew what this story was gonna be about when I read it. And this guy says, these are the problems. And I agree, you know, I think the problem of homelessness though is not a problem that is just a local problem. Homelessness, you can leave that on. Sorry, I'm sorry it's flickering, but. That's all right, that's all right. But the problem of homelessness affects every city the size of Portland or larger in America. And there are no new ideas on homelessness. There are a lot of failed ideas, but it is a fact, I just, look, I have a first cousin, my mother's sister's son, who's homeless, I know all about it. And it's a very, very tough problem, but it's not just a local problem, but it's important to be concerned about it. Impact of the cruise ships and the building boom. So this reminds me that there are people, many of whom probably read your newspaper, who think that this is terrible what's happening in Portland, the building boom. Cause they weren't here in all the years you and I were here, where there was no building boom. When I came back to Portland in the late 1960s, nothing had happened in Portland since the Civil War. It just was a moribund place. Would you dare do a story? I'm not suggesting you do it, but this is a way of continuing this dialogue with you about the need, somebody making a speech about the need for capital in every community, money to invest, capital. That's where it all comes from. I don't want to sound like one of those right wing Republicans, because I don't agree how they use this, but capital is important. And would we see it in an alternative newspaper? As somebody says, you know, here's somebody who wants to invest in Portland. You can debate about whether it's gonna look nice or not look nice. I don't know either like the way it looks or whatever, but how does it hurt other than, you know, it's bad planning. That's the question, whether you can write something in your newspaper about that. Not suggesting you do, but whether you can, whether there's room. I would hope that if the, you know, if that, you know, I'm not an expert on this, Harold, so I can't really talk about the issues of capital and coming in, but I would hope that we'd be open to, you know, a newspaper and this, it should surprise you sometimes with something different or some new idea that maybe you're not expecting from a traditional liberal paper. So if it was a, you know, a more conservative idea that looked at another aspect of the problem and the role of capital and the need for the housing, you're right, homelessness is a, it's the, and housing are just the huge, huge issues right now and absolutely have to be tackled. And, but I would hope we could always, if the facts led us in that direction, we'd be open to looking at ways of to review the story that would be, you know, unusual and perhaps surprising, so. Yeah, I think it just, for instance, people don't, some people don't appreciate the fact that every affordable housing project, every low income project requires private capital, mostly from away, often, maybe not mostly, but often people who don't even live here, investing in affordable housing or low income housing, and we don't see any of that in the press ever and reporters don't think that way. So I think there is a possibility, we're getting a little off here, but another piece that I thought was very interesting in your newspaper that is a reason for people to read your newspaper. You had an interesting piece about greater Portland governments planning for rising sea levels, perhaps the greatest long-term problem our community faces since we're on the sea, on the ocean, the greatest. And it's not very topical, I mean, people don't write about it very much, but you did, and I was interested in that, I said, dude, that's something I wanna read. And you wanna comment on that? Well, absolutely, and I was, I really suggested that to our reporter because I'm just amazed driving around here, driving in on Baxter Boulevard every day, I keep watching for the moment at which the water is gonna rise, rising over my trip, which is not far away. I mean, it's so clear and imminent and it's very hard. We made a good try there, but we're really gonna have to continue this because this is a big issue that we need to grapple with. And the cities of Portland and South Portland are working on this, but it's just key, obviously, to what's gonna, to our future here. And it's so hard to grasp, I think, for all of us living our day-to-day lives in the present. I mean, we're all talking about global warming, of course, and environmental issues, but our specific vulnerability here in Portland is very, and in this whole area, is obviously very pronounced. And so I think we're, I'm glad you liked that story, but we need to do more of that, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think it's very interesting stuff. And I was intrigued when you said your model, you'd like to be more like the main times than one of these alternative, more radical newspapers. You'd like to be more like the main times, which emphasized environmental things. So that article that I read in your paper was the kind of article that would appear in the main times. Well, I, yeah, I would, I mean, the main times at the beginning did an awful lot of great stuff. And knowing John Cole as I did, I mean, his writing and the thing about John Cole, I mean, he certainly was a liberal, but he could also surprise you, you know, with a different point of view and something, you know, he was just thoughtful in his columns. But yes, we would love to be writing about, you know, the issues, especially environmental issues, which really were the hallmark of main times. But we need to combine that with our, you know, our focus on local issue, you know, here in Greater Portland. One of the reasons that John Cole was such a good writer and editor and the main times was looked at as mainstream. And I don't, today a lot of people think, no, mainstream is terrible. People in the far left, people in the far right, mainstream is bad. But mainstream means that you appeal to a wide swath of people, a very broad spectrum of people in your newspaper, your product has appeal for that wide spectrum. John Cole was able to do that. I knew John Cole, well, one of the reasons that John Cole in main times could do that is John Cole maintained relationships with people. You said he was a liberal guy, he was, but he had many close relationships and friendships with people who were not liberals. They are the opposite, but they liked him and they trusted him and they confided in him and they told him things. So he's a very good one. Tamulate, I have to tell you a little story, trying to learn more about your paper, but I have to divert a little. One time I was driving with John Cole and we were, it was late in the afternoon, 435 o'clock and we were near Millbridge, Maine. In Millbridge was a state senator, Hollis Wyman, a very right wing guy. And Hollis Wyman was like the feudal king, the blueberry king of Washington County. And John said to me, when we get up here to Millbridge, I'll show you where to go. We'll just go to Hollis's house, he'll give us supper. We didn't call him or anything. I drove, he told me how to get there, drove up to Hollis, Senator Hollis Wyman, the very powerful Republican Senator's house. And John went up, rang the doorbell that Hollis came to the door and he touched, come in, got me to come in. We had lobster and blueberry pie. He loved John Cole. And John Cole and he didn't share a single political opinion. But that's how Cole wrote, ran that show. And he had his tentacles out to everybody. So that's my comment on that. Great story. That's a great story, very much how he was. And you have a lot of contacts too. You know a lot of people, don't you? You ran that forecaster for a long time. Yeah, well, I know a few. I mean, I've grown up around here and did the forecaster for quite a while. And yeah, I like, we have contacts that will help. I have contacts that will help. Yeah, and it gives you ideas for stories. I mean, your whole experience and editors experience, it gives them ideas for stories. And your experience is that you grew up here. This was your town. You know it very well. And so I think your newspaper is gonna do quite well and now I'm getting hooked on it. So, and as you say, it will grow, right? I mean, it'll grow organically. You'll be doing different things two years from now that you're doing now. Yes, no, we have to, we've made a good start. I'm really proud of this group and my team and what we've done, but we wanna get a lot better and keep going and but put out a better product. I mean, there's no point in, we've got it. You just can't get up and do the same thing all the time. We wanna figure out how to provide better coverage and do the kind of stories that you're commenting on because we need to do more of those. And as we don't always have them, it's hard to get them every week, but we've got to find them and explore those stories. So, are you still, you and Karen Wood still associated in the journalism business? Yes, she's my business partner here and co-owner and she handles the publishing side, you know, more of the business side than... Yeah, and she and you were together at the forecaster too, right? Yeah. Well, there may be people on shoot, there are a lot of people that know Karen as well as you. So that would be of interest to our listeners and a lot of people that know Karen's husband, Godfrey Wood, who for a very long time ran the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce and also owned the hockey teams or was one of the owners of the hockey team. So, they're very well known and I think that's important to keep in mind and I think that's important in the community that some of the writers that write for you have great appeal for, even though some of them are older, have great appeal for younger readers and activists, social activists in Portland. And at the same time, you and Karen have great connections to, I don't wanna spoil your reputation with some of those younger readers, but you have great connections to the Greater Portland Establishment, another bad word, establishment, but I'm sorry to accuse you of that, but it's true. So, there is this broad aspect to what you're doing in your experience. Well, yeah, I mean, it does help to have some experience. One of the toughest things I think for Karen especially is that normally in this time in starting any new business, she'd be doing a lot of networking, a lot of chamber events, a lot of, because she does know a lot of people, as you say, she'd be meeting people and telling us, telling people about the Phoenix and our product and that just hasn't happened since November, well, since March, but we really haven't done that since for many months. And that's slowed our expansion into the community of that. Well, so you have a long list of post-pademic objectives. Absolutely. We need to be better and do certain stories. I have some specific ideas. And, but generally, and this is why I'm so grateful to you, Harold, for having me on your program. We need, people need to get to know us and we need to find ways for people to find us and know who we are and pick us up at the newsstand. That's happening. People do know us, but as a new publication, especially in this time of COVID, it does take a while for people to figure out who you are and decide they're gonna come back and pick up another copy or actually website. Yeah, no, that leads me to the two questions or you can comment. We just have a few minutes left here, but I want you to tell our listeners two things. Give me the both questions and you can answer them in whatever order you want. Why is it important for me, the viewer, to get to know your newspaper and to begin reading it and seeing things in it that they will not see in other local newspapers and where do I get it? How can I make it easy for me? Tell me where to get it and tell me why I should get it. Well, the second part is, of course, the easiest. The website is theportlandphoenix.me is the website that a lot of people are going to and our reports and our analytics on people going to the website are really growing very, very well. And other than that, it's really the best place is the stores, the big stores. Shop, you know, Hannaford Shaw's, those places where you can routinely find it. And I know that's challenging again now because people aren't going into stores so much and that's a little bit challenging. Well, tell me about it. I go once in a while and there's a lot of people in there, but all right, what is the website address? Portlandphoenix.me Portlandphoenix.me, pretty simple. Yeah. Pretty simple. And now the other question, which I want you to convince these folks watching this, look them straight in the eye and say, here's why you need to read my newspaper. Well, that's absolutely great question. You need to read our newspaper because we're gonna have very intensive coverage of local government in this area, in Greater Portland, especially Portland. We cover committees and things going on that the other paper does not cover. We have arts coverage. We really feel strongly that our coverage of fine arts and theater is important and that you should pick us up for that reason and that we have a forum for opinions and commentary that's really open and attractive to people and interesting commentators from various backgrounds. But that is, you constantly, you're asking the question that is perhaps, you left the hardest question for last, Harold. I did that because you were just getting warmed up. And I figured, now she's warmed up. I'll throw this one at her. And it's not, somebody would say it's a softball. It's not really a softball because you know what you wanna do and you know what your objectives are and you're trying to match that with your audience. I guess I'm hoping to provide a truly independent option for people when we're living in a media age where in terms of newspapers in this area, there's just one publishing company, Maine Today Media, essentially, based in this area and they've taken, they're covering so much of Maine that we wanna do something that's independent. And I guess that's really the main part that we wanna provide an independent alternative that's independent but not necessarily driven by, I've never wanted and I never wanted on the forecaster and this is perhaps why it did stay successful. I wasn't putting my own ideology first and saying this is Marion's newspaper and we're all gonna read about what Marion thinks. And I don't think that's of much interest. I wanna, I'm really interested in what's out there and what's going on. That's what's drawn me into this business. So I wanna tell people what's going on in the world around them and especially at this time, Portland is gonna go through a great deal in the next year. It's gonna, how it recovers, how this city and this greater Portland area recovers from COVID and what changes and probably permanent changes there are gonna be in the business atmosphere of Portland and also there are some governmental changes like the Charter Commission. Portland is gonna be looking at recasting potentially its government and there's a lot of trends in terms of younger people coming in to Portland and really asking for certain, pushing certain issues like the minimum wage and a Charter Commission, which is really gonna change, I think, the face of Portland and we wanna be there writing about it. When you do that and you like some of these younger people, you write about what are these younger people want and the changes they want, do me a favor because you'll have an opportunity to explain something. I never understood it. What does defund the police mean? No one's ever explained that. No newspaper's ever explained it. Does it mean get rid of the police? No more appropriations for police and we'll just do it the way it was done in the Wild West. When you do that, but look, we've run out of time here and this has been really interesting for me and I hope interesting for our viewers, many of whom will go online and read your newspaper when we end, as we end. I give you a little bit of advice. The other important thing is to get leaders, community leaders, statewide leaders, talking about mentioning your newspaper and I can tell you, based on 50 years of experience, the only way you will get them to pay attention to your paper is to put their name in your newspaper, mention them. All right, well, look, Marion, it's been a pleasure and very interesting to me. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you, Harold, this has been great fun and I really appreciate the opportunity to be on your program, this has been great, thank you. Thanks a lot.