Over the past two weeks, we have made significant changes to the print editions of the Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel, Portland Press Herald and Sun Journal. The Maine Trust for Local News made these production and product updates to ensure long-term sustainability and focus investments where they matter most — in local journalism. 

We’ve received a lot of valuable feedback from readers, and we acknowledge continuing challenges in the delivery of certain papers. We appreciate your patience as we work to improve on this new system, which is essential for our organization to adapt and thrive. 

Below are updates to some of these significant changes and the efforts we’re making to respond to feedback. 

Distribution

The Tuesday through Friday newspapers for the Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel and Sun Journal are now delivered by mail, while the majority of households within our delivery footprint continue to have home delivery on Sunday. There are no longer print editions for those publications on Saturdays; however, we continue to offer comics, puzzles and extra TV listings as ePaper pages online. 

Our Circulation department has been working hard with the U.S. Postal Service to improve upon delivery of the weekday papers, especially where we know mail delivery has been spotty or inconsistent. We expect to see some improvement in the coming weeks now that we are fine-tuning additional logistics with the Post Office. In addition, the weekday editions continue to be available at select newsstands in our core market areas. 

Comics 

We understand any change to the comics lineup is difficult for readers who are used to certain strips each day. The comics in the daily and Sunday editions are now shared as an identical lineup among the Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel, Portland Press Herald and Sun Journal. In making these changes, we tried to balance the preferences of our daily newspaper audiences while trying to keep the total number relatively stable to fit in the allotted space.  

The new daily lineup is: Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Curtis, Dennis the Menace, Rhymes with Orange, Zits, Adam @ Home, Big Nate, Close to Home, Family Circus, Garfield, Get Fuzzy, Non Sequitur, Peanuts, Pearls Before Swine, Pickles, Pooch Café, Red and Rover, Arlo & Janis, Luann, and For Better or For Worse. 

Opinion and letters

The new focus for the Opinion section is local and statewide, prioritizing letters and columns about Maine. We have stepped away from syndicated national columnists and are sharing state and local-focused letters from all parts of the state. We understand this is a shift for readers accustomed to seeing letters written only by residents in their local coverage area, but we will continue to carefully select content that is of broad interest to Mainers. We also recently introduced Sun Journal journalist Steve Collins as our new statewide politics columnist, whose columns are now included in this section.

Event listings, Go entertainment 

We heard from western and central Maine readers who missed having local event listings in the newspaper, so now have a new weekly feature publishing on Wednesdays. Top local things to do are now rounded up in a story in the Local section for the Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel and for the Sun Journal. And daily event listings powered by our Cityspark event calendar can also be found online.

On Thursdays, readers of the Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel and Sun Journal are now also receiving the “Go” entertainment section produced by the Portland Press Herald, featuring “Best Bets” event lists, interviews with Maine artists, musicians and celebrities, and ideas for planning your weekend. We have updated the front cover to note this is now a statewide section serving readers across Maine, and the content is focused on being of broad interest. 

Southern Maine community ePapers

Following the final print editions last month for weekly newspapers in Southern Maine, we have launched new ePapers that are linked to the weekly newsletters produced by our community reporters: Cape-SoPo-Scarborough Now, Lakes Region Now, Westbrook-Gorham Now, Cumberland Yarmouth Now, Falmouth Now, Biddeford-Saco Now, and Kennebunk Now. We’ve seen strong readership for these new ePaper editions, which include staff-written stories, columns, obituaries, local advertising and more. 

If you have questions you don’t see answered here, email us at: news@centralmaine.com, news@sunjournal.com or contact@pressherald.com. Delivery-related matters may be sent to: circulation@metln.org.