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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PublishedJuly 19, 2024
Commentary: How we might better navigate the culture wars
Earlier this year, Escambia County, Florida, received national attention for banning over 1,600 books, the most by any single county in the entire country. If you’ve been following book banning efforts, many titles on the list won’t surprise you. But these might: multiple editions of the dictionary, various encyclopedias, and “The Guinness Book of World […]
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PublishedJuly 18, 2024
Commentary: Finding innovators in an unlikely place — Congress
One of the last places you’d expect to see innovation in the workplace is in the halls of Congress. One lawmaker described the institution this way: Congress is “a 19th-century institution often using 20th-century technology to solve 21st-century problems.” That is one of the reasons the Congressional Management Foundation sought to create competition among members […]
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PublishedJuly 16, 2024
Commentary: There’s only one right response to the Trump shooting
I was boarding a plane from Los Angeles back home to Philadelphia when the news hit that former President Donald Trump had been injured during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The details were sketchy, but the responses online and on the plane were already wild — and entirely predictable. This is precisely the kind of […]
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PublishedJuly 15, 2024
Commentary: How Congress can quickly make Ozempic, Wegovy affordable
A whopping one in eight U.S. adults have taken GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic for weight loss and related conditions. Their popularity and efficacy have sparked a prescription-writing frenzy in recent years, leaving both medications on the Food and Drug Administration’s drug shortage list since May 2023. But even when the supply rebounds, access […]
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PublishedJuly 14, 2024
Hilary Koch: From Rome to Waterville … with love
A trip through central Maine is full of everyday wonder.
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PublishedJuly 12, 2024
Commentary: Only locals should be allowed to attend the Olympics
Games populated almost entirely by foreign tourists have long been a thorn in the side of locals.
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PublishedJuly 11, 2024
Commentary: Veterans are working to make democracy more representative
Imagine this: A general election with no negative campaigning and four or five viable candidates (regardless of party affiliation) competing based on their own personal ideas and actions — not simply their level of obstruction or how well they demonize their opponents. In this reformed election process, the candidate with the best ideas and the […]
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PublishedJuly 10, 2024
Commentary: Americans are getting our ‘pursuit of happiness’ all wrong. There’s a simple fix
When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our unalienable rights include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, he had a very specific definition of happiness in mind. He believed that happiness was the result of living virtuously — that becoming a fully happy human required devoting yourself to service to your […]
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PublishedJuly 9, 2024
Commentary: Teaching your kids to swim this summer? Steer clear of floaties
In the drowning prevention community, we dread hearing the other F-word: floaties. These seemingly innocuous devices give responsible parents a false sense of security with the assumption that the inflatables will keep their kids safe and help teach them to swim. But in practice, consistent floatie use increases the risks of accidental drowning. With U.S. […]
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PublishedJuly 8, 2024
For an ethical and enjoyable wildlife experience, embrace the space
The opportunity to see fascinating species thriving in their natural environments draws many of us to national parks, waterways and wildlife refuges every year. Almost as alluring is the appeal of getting the perfect picture that captures an animal’s beauty, ingenuity or charisma. But our Instagram aspirations must not be achieved at animals’ expense. Experts […]
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