Journalism group quits

By TED COHEN/PATCH.COM

The Maine 'nonprofit' corporation that failed to raise enough money to buy the Portland Press Herald is dissolving after violating a mandatory state deadline.

The Maine Journalism Foundation - which is based in that state - had been on probation with the Maine secretary of state for failing to file its annual report on time.

The group filed the report at the 11th hour on August 17th - two months late, then announced it's all done.

By filing the report - even late - it avoided the secretary of state involuntarily revoking its articles of incorporation. But at that point a revocation was academic because the foundation went out of business anyway.

The secretary requires corporations to file annual reports on their financial and organizational status.

The foundation had earlier tried to raise money to buy the state's largest newspaper but failed to do so.

So a national nonprofit news corporation swooped in at the last minute and bought the Press Herald along with several sister papers.

The Maine-based foundation was allegedly going to have a hand in the newspapers' management but so far officials had been sketchy about the extent of that supposed relationship with the National Trust for Local News.

The foundation, in its failed efforts to raise enough money to buy the newspapers without the expected financial support of the national trust, was in its own way trying to reverse Maine journalism history.

Ironically, the foundation's fundraising chairwoman, Madeleine Corson, comes from the family that in 1921 bought the state's largest newspaper, which it sold in 1998.

Twenty-five years later, Corson agreed to let her name be used in what became the foundation's feeble attempt to raise money to buy back the paper that her grandfather, Guy Gannett, once owned.

Corson had sold off the family jewel in 1998, having no heirs who were interested in carrying on the Gannett legacy.

In addition to the foundation's unsuccessful fundraising attempt and late filing of its annual report, its website remains out of date - and in fact makes no mention of the fact it's going out of business.

The foundation's website still states that the organization's plans are to buy the Press Herald.

"The foundation is moving quickly to assemble a group of local donors and, as its first foray into non-profit news, acquire Maine’s largest media group," says the dated message on its website.

But that shortchanged dream, so-called, has come and gone. Old news, so to speak - and not the way to try to show people you know how to run a newspaper.

Ted Cohen, now a freelance writer, was a longtime reporter for the Portland Press Herald.