Coffee with a side of news. Maine paper opens café to welcome in community.
It is a sunny morning in downtown Camden, in Maine.
Inside the Villager Cafe, the smell of freshly prepared coffee, and chatter is sporadically interrupted by chirping from a talkie-walkie of a coffee. Three women settle in a table in front of the window. They have known each other from high school and meet regularly to discuss politics.
It is an appropriate place to do so. Printed copies of the Midcoast villagers – a daily online and weekly printed newspaper covering Midcoast Maine – are displayed near the cash register. Goods bearing the mascot lines of paper nearby. Just upstairs, a small lively writing room rushes to respect the weekly printing deadline.
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It is not surprising that the media are difficulties in dollars and confidence. In Camden, Maine, a local newspaper opened a coffee to welcome in the community.
The villager, who opened in April, is not only a coffee. It is a newspaper for newspapers and events for the Villagers of Midcoast. The newspaper wants coffee to be a “third space for community commitment”, in the words of the editor Alex Seitz-Wald.
Today, media confidence and drop-down readers have led some to wonder if the United States is in a “post-News era”. Last year, 130 newspapers closed at a rate of almost 2 1/2 per week, according to a report from the local initiative of the Northwestern University. Last October, 206 counties in the United States have no local media at all.
The local media, faced with strong financial losses, find new ways to re -engage with their audience. Some, like Wbur, an affiliate of NPR in Boston, opted for performance and event spaces; Others, such as Texas Tribune, organize festivals.
The loss of local newspapers is “really prejudicial to civic life and civil speech, and the capacity of average people to be informed of their community,” explains Meg Heckman, associate professor of journalism at the Northeastern University in Boston.
“It is much more difficult to know what is going on at the town hall, [or] Changes in federal environmental policy could mean for rural farmers or peaches or tourism, ”she adds.
“You grow or die”
Reade Brower has long been considered the Maine’s “media junk”. In 2019, he had six of the seven daily newspapers in Maine, more than 20 weekly publications and three printing presses. In 2023, he sold the vast majority to the National Trust for Local News, a non -profit organization. Four of the newspapers he held – the Camden Herald, the Republican Journal, the Courier -Gazette and the Free Press, as well as a online information platform known as Soup Village – have become the villager of Midcoast. He published his first issue at the end of 2024.
Hannah Hoggatt / Gracieuse of the Villagers of Midcoast
The inhabitants were not surprised that the newspapers struggled – and there was not a little decline to consolidate publications in a single newspaper.
“Now it is so common to understand that the media do not work like a business,” explains Kathleen Fleury Capetta, co-founder of the Villageois of Midcoast. “The foundation has been fixed for us.”
With the advent of online platforms like Google, Facebook and Craigslist, the advertising of income that the publications of new funded has practically disappeared. US newspapers earned $ 49 billion in advertising revenue in 2006; This number fell to less than $ 10 billion in 2022.
About 85% of American adults believe that local media “are at least somewhat important for the well-being of their local community”, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey. But only 15% say they have paid or given money to any local information source in the past year, which has been largely unchanged since 2018.
People were curious to consult the coffee, explains Aaron Britt, co-publisher, stalling it with questions such as: “” Is it open? Can I enter? What’s going on? I want to see him, “explains Mr. Britt.” And I just heard like nothing other than great things. People love food, people meet everyone they know. “
The idea, he adds, is that “members of the community can feel like:” Oh, it’s my place “.”
Mr. Brower had long dreamed of putting cafes in all the communities in which he had a newspaper. Ms. Capetta had already been invited to plan and open a coffee of news in the Cayman Islands – although the concept collapsed due to the pandemic. Together, they proposed the Villager Cafe.
“I strongly believe in the declaration you are growing up or dying,” explains Mr. Brower.
Mackenzie Farkus / The Christian Science Monitor
Changing perspectives
In addition to the decline of local newspapers, the media industry faces a lack of confidence.
Over the past three years, “more American adults have no confidence in the media (36%) than doing him a lot or a good amount”, according to a Gallup 2024 survey. However, the Americans have a more positive perspective of their local news according to the 2024 PEW survey, with 78% of the Democrats and 66% of the Republicans declaring that local media reports the news.
“I think that many things where we are today are due to the perception that there are publishers and writers in this tower who cover the problems, but they are not entirely connected with the readers,” explains Ms. Capetta. “We are trying to change this perspective.”
Each Friday, a village editor of Rotative Midcoast welcomes “Fresh Brewed News”, where public members can discuss local problems and have a glimpse of how the stories of the week have emerged.
There is a silent reading club, where people can commune with other readers for an hour of silent reading, reserved by a few minutes of conversation. In the future, Mr. Seitz-Wald hopes to take debates on local issues.
“The objective of the coffee at the beginning was:” How do we connect our community and create a place of respectful dialogue? ” “Said Mr. Brower. “We think we are getting there.”
Although the coffee model can be a step in the right direction towards Fostering Trust, Professor Heckman warns against this model as a “miracle solution” for the news industry in difficulty.
“I don’t think that brewing her coffee every morning will necessarily solve all public confidence problems,” she said. “I think for a local audience, the ability to attach a physical location and names to faces, personalities, people who are in their community, they change the dynamics a little.”
Midcoast villagers have already presented calls from other media organizations interested in the approach.
“Everyone is invited to call us and steal our idea if he loves her,” says Brower.
