Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Hannah Hoggatt/Midcoast Villager.
The Villager Cafe in Camden, Maine, serves as a newsstand and events space for the Midcoast Villager. It allows locals to mingle comfortably with reporters — and maybe share news.

Blogger Laurie Graves in Maine had a fantasy podcast at one point that involved a café/sandwich shop run by elves. I couldn’t help thinking about it as I read today’s story.

Mackenzie Farkus, a staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor, reports, “Inside the Villager Cafe, the scent of freshly brewed coffee lingers, and chatter is sporadically interrupted by chirps from a cafégoer’s walkie-talkie. Three women settle into a window-side table. They’ve known each other since high school, and they regularly meet to discuss politics.

“It’s an apt place to do so. Print copies of the Midcoast Villager — an online daily and weekly print newspaper covering midcoast Maine — are displayed near the cash register. … Just upstairs, a small, bustling newsroom is rushing to meet the weekly print deadline.

“The Villager Cafe, which opened in April, isn’t just a café. It’s a newsstand and events space for the Midcoast Villager. The newspaper wants the café to be a ‘third space for community engagement,’ in the words of deputy editor Alex Seitz-Wald. …

“Last year, 130 newspapers shut down at a rate of almost 2 1/2 per week, according to a report from Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative. As of last October, 206 counties across the U.S. don’t have a local news outlet at all. … The loss of local newspapers is ‘really damaging to civic life and civil discourse, and the ability of average people to be informed about their community,’ says Meg Heckman, an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.

“ ‘It’s a lot harder to know what’s going on in town hall, [or] what changes to federal environmental policy might mean to rural farmers or fisheries or tourism,’ she adds.

“Reade Brower has long been regarded as Maine’s ‘media mogul.’ In 2019, he owned six of Maine’s seven daily newspapers, more than 20 weekly publications, and three printing presses. In 2023, he sold the vast majority to the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit. Four of the papers he held onto … became the Midcoast Villager. It published its first issue in late 2024. …

“U.S. newspapers earned $49 billion in advertising revenue in 2006; that number dropped to less than $10 billion in 2022.

“Around 85% of U.S. adults believe that local news outlets ‘are at least somewhat important to the well-being of their local community,’ according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey. But only 15% say they’ve paid or given money to any local news source in the past year, which has largely remained unchanged since 2018.

“People have been curious to check out the café, says Aaron Britt, publisher … says Mr. Britt. ‘And I’ve just heard like nothing but great things. People like the food, people run into everybody that they know. … Community members can feel like, “Oh, this is my spot.” ‘ …

“ ‘I think a lot of where we are today is due to the perception that there are editors and writers away in this tower who are covering issues, but they’re not fully connected with readers,’ [Kathleen Fleury Capetta, co-founder of the Midcoast Villager] says. ‘We’re trying to shift that perspective.’ …

” ‘The café’s goal at the very start has been, “How do we connect our community and create a respectful place of dialogue?” ‘ says Mr. Brower. ‘We believe we’re achieving that.’ …

“Staffers at the Midcoast Villager have already fielded calls from other media organizations interested in the approach.

“ ‘Anybody is welcome to call us up and steal our idea if they like it,’ Mr. Brower says.”  More at the Monitor, here.

In my town, we have a community paper, too. It’s doing very well thanks to donations and ads. As delightful as the Villager Cafe sounds, I hope our paper will stick to what it knows best and not try to get into the food business. The rents alone would guarantee failure here.