Transcript: Maine’s Mills-Platner Senate Race Is A Huge Dem Battle

Seitz Forest: Correct, yes – former chief of staff to Katie Porter. He ran End Citizens Uniteda younger man, returned to Maine, where he was originally from. His dad is actually the new pastor at the church near my house – because everything is small.

And there is a third candidate, who is the CEO of Maine Beer Company, a large brewery in Freeport. He came in – and it’s so funny – I mean, as, you know, a beer brewer, you would think he would be the most interesting candidate in the race. And it came literally a week after Platner, but at that point it was already like, you know, we were at this type of oyster. Sorry, beer guy. 24:11:

Bacon: I hate to ask this question – it’s a very DC political question – but I guess Plattner hasn’t been scrutinized in some way, right? We don’t know, we don’t know. It’s a new person running. There’s not a lot of press in Maine, and I guess he’s just started showing up. So on some level, are there – I hate to say this – but we don’t, like Susan Collins, Mills, we probably… there have been a lot of profiles written about them. Both parties have conducted investigative research against them. Plattner is a new character. There’s probably an unknown here, right?

Seitz Forest: That’s a great question, and that’s my biggest asterisk with him. My two biggest asterisks: Can he actually get the work boots? Isn’t that just the brunch boots? And the second is: what is in his past? Because, yeah, I mean, that’s another thing that’s so unusual that it’s hard to think of a precedent for.

Usually, if you’re one of those viral candidates — an Amy McGrath or someone like that — you’re a fighter pilot. You have been examined; you had to maintain a security clearance. Or you’re a CEO, or you know, a local elected official, or even a community leader who runs a large nonprofit organization. You’re sort of a public figure who’s been somewhat controlled by an organization, and you probably ran for office, so the opposition, you know, hired investigators and went after you, and the press did whatever they wanted with that.

Nothing like that on Platner. It’s a completely blank page. And, you know, he talked about coming back from combat missions and his struggles, and we don’t really know – we don’t really know what happened over those years. So I think we will learn what happened over these years. I just don’t know what’s there.

Bacon: So, let’s talk about Midcoast Villagers A little. I don’t know much about it. I went to Portland, Maine – it’s the big city, I think, in Maine. So where are you? Where is your publication? Is it a newspaper? Is this a website? Explain a little bit about what Midcoast Villager is, because I think we’re in a place where local media is dying – and I mentioned innovations in local media. So talk about Midcoast Villagers a little bit.

Seitz Forest: Yeah, I’m happy to explain a little. It’s – I’ll start – it’s Earnour mascot Midcoast Villagers. We’re based in Camden, which is about an hour and a half north of Portland on the coast, and we cover Camden – which sort of straddles two counties, Knox and Waldo County. So we basically cover everything from Damariscotta, where a lot of oysters come from, to kind of like Bucksport. There’s a bridge before you get to Acadia — it’s to the east — that’s where Graham Platner comes from.

So it’s coastal, you know, big fishing and lobster industries, also a big tourist scene and sort of a second home, huge artistic and literary environments. So this is the kind of place where, if we can make this work anywhere, this is the kind of place where we can make this work — and by “this,” I mean like a new model for local media. But the scary thing is, if we don’t succeed, I worry. And it’s hard – it’s really cool, but it’s hard.

It’s an area of ​​about 80,000 people, very literate and very community oriented. People want to know what’s going on. They want to get involved and read good things. It also attracts an unusually high level of talent – other extraordinary people who joined me came from New York Review And Remain and, you know, I’ve worked at places like RISD and been top designers. And everyone really cares about this product and wants to make it really good.

The idea is that we can no longer just tell stories and just, you know, be observers – we have to be active members of the community, building community. So we opened this cafe which is a physical space to have these conversations. I do office hours at the coffee shop – editor’s office hours – where people can just come and pitch a story, or, you know, complain about a headline or whatever. We want to be as accessible and transparent as possible.

And it’s also a way to diversify our income: our landlord owns the building, the café, the newsroom and a small hotel that we use for writing retreats. So we just had our first writing retreat – Liz Lenz, if you know her from Iowa, came and led the retreat. We’re trying to reinvent the model of local journalism because it’s fundamentally broken. It’s even worse than I thought.

I’m getting ready to go this weekend first to the Maine Press Association and then to this national conference in Salt Lake City hosted by this organization, Press Forward, which brings together a lot of innovative local media from around the country. I’m really looking forward to it – where we can all exchange advice and, you know, try to figure this out together.

I’m a journalist — I come from an editorial background, that’s where my focus and my passion — but I’m finding more and more that I want to continue to work as much in business, because we know how to do journalism. We do good journalism every day. It’s about finding how to make this approach profitable, but also make it vital and relevant in people’s lives.

And that’s one thing I disagree with other views on: I don’t think it should just be a purely philanthropic thing, where, you know, it’s a good cause. It should be something people want to pay for. So it’s a fun challenge and it’s very difficult, but it’s really exciting.

Bacon: And great. With that, I’m excited about Midcoast Villagers. It’s great to have Alex. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for those who watched, and we’ll be back later in the week. Thanks, Alex.

Seitz Forest: Thank you very much, Perry. Good to see you.