Ben Bragdon is deputy managing editor for local news, overseeing enterprise reporting projects for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. Ben was previously editorial page editor for those newspapers and Central Maine Sunday for more than 10 years. Before that, he was managing editor for weekly newspapers at Current Publishing in Westbrook. He began his career as a reporter at the Piscataquis Observer in Dover-Foxcroft and editor at the Moosehead Messenger in Greenville. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Boston University.
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PublishedDecember 17, 2023
Our View: Remarkable population growth, remarkable opportunity for Maine
Big-picture changes in American life are playing into Maine’s strengths.
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PublishedDecember 15, 2023
Commentary: Supreme Court should make it clear Trump is not above the law
Should former president Donald Trump be immune from federal criminal prosecution for his conduct in the run-up to Jan. 6? He’s argued both that his position as president should make him immune from prosecution and that because the Senate did not convict him after he was impeached, criminal charges would amount to a kind of […]
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PublishedDecember 11, 2023
Commentary: New dietary guidelines for Americans? Nobody cares
News that the U.S. government’s next set of dietary guidelines for 2025-30 may include warnings against ultra-processed foods should be greeted with ultra-cautious optimism. The committee that revises the guidelines every five years, appointed by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services, has too many members with conflicts of interest, […]
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PublishedDecember 11, 2023
Commentary: What’s it like to be an average American?
One of the best ways to get a picture of a nation is through its numbers and, perhaps more importantly, its averages. But Americans like to believe that their nation is exceptional. And in some ways, it is. Yet what transpires on an “average day” for the “average person” tells a story that each of […]
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PublishedDecember 9, 2023
Commentary: Only a seismic shift can reverse the rise in suicides among older adults
America is getting older. That was the snapshot given earlier this year by the U.S. Census Bureau. Our median age is about 40 and rising. In a third of the states, it’s already higher. Remember that, while also considering this: America’s suicide rate in 2022 was the highest seen since 1941 — the tail end […]
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PublishedDecember 8, 2023
View from Away: University presidents proved spectacularly inept on Capitol Hill. Resignations should follow
On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York posed the same question to the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, proxies all for America’s liberal intellectual elite. The repeated question for Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of Penn and Sally Kornbluth of MIT from the […]
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PublishedDecember 8, 2023
Commentary: The holiday season finds us divided and isolated. This modest gesture might help
We are living in an age of placeless possibility: a time when we can instantly get in touch with another person no matter where they are on the planet through any number of media. We can catch up with friends and family, network, and even date virtually. We can connect with hundreds simultaneously Zooming in […]
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PublishedDecember 5, 2023
Martin Schram: Covering Kissinger’s century
President Richard Nixon was work-vacationing in his Western White House estate at San Clemente and not far away, the White House press corps was about to be briefed by the world’s most famous anonymous authority on all foreign policies. Which is to say, another ritual Vietnam War policy/press corps kabuki was about to start. It […]
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PublishedDecember 4, 2023
View from Away: America’s high schoolers are running out of time
America’s high schools face a growing crisis: Millions of students who entered ninth grade in the fall of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, are set to graduate this spring, with little hope of recovering from the learning loss incurred while schools were shut. Simply put, they’re running out of time. Since the start […]
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PublishedDecember 3, 2023
Hilary Koch: A positively Python-esque Thanksgiving
Picture this: your college-bound offspring is due to return home for Thanksgiving break. Instead of an embrace, you’re greeted by an uninvited guest — hours before his plane lands, you test positive for COVID-19. In the thrilling saga of my encounter with COVID-19 during Thanksgiving week, reality decided to outdo fiction. A rollercoaster of tasteless […]
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