A Maine beacon blinks

Portland shaken by warning that its daily could fold

PORTLAND, Maine - Every day for the last 20 years, shortly after 5 a.m., Mayor Ed Suslovic has stepped through his front door in an undershirt and boxers to begin a ritual that defines his day. He picks up the morning paper.

Then, sitting at his kitchen table, he peruses the paper for items people might talk about and for any that have to do with him or his fellow city councilors. He checks the obituaries for people he knows.

"I feel like my day hasn't started right if I don't have a newspaper," he said.

But he and thousands of others in Maine's largest city are confronting the possibility that the paper could soon stop landing on front porches and that Portland could become one of the first American cities to lose its daily newspaper. The Portland Press Herald said in court papers last month that it is hemorrhaging so badly that it may have to be dismantled if it isn't sold. The documents are part of an ongoing dispute between the pa per's owners and its editorial union.

After the documents were publicized on a website and in Associated Press stories last week, the publisher, Charles Cochrane, sought to quell fears that the paper would fold soon. But the possibility of its demise has become the topic of speculation as Portlanders in waterfront taverns, corner coffee shops, and ethnic grocery stores across the city tried to picture life without the newspaper that has set agendas, entertained, and informed residents for the past 146 years.

"It is such a profound change as to be almost impossible to imagine," said Herb Adams, a Portland resident who serves in the Maine House of Representatives. "It would mean the end of a shared experience, sense of community, sense of common purpose. Newspapers represent all of that."

"Can you even be a major city without a daily paper?" wondered Tricia Burnham, a 24-year-old Portland native who said she reads the Press Herald most days while working at a downtown café.

Cochrane and Press Herald editor Jeannine Guttman did not return phone calls seeking comment for this report. But in a story that appeared on the front page of his paper last week, Cochrane said the closing of the paper is not likely or imminent. The company is negotiating a sale with a group of local investors, though in the court documents Cochrane characterized that deal as "highly tentative."

Like broadsheets across the country, Portland's newspaper has struggled in recent years. Advertising revenues are down 19 percent from last year, according to Cochrane's affidavit, and circulation has declined 13 percent over the past decade, to 64,938.

The Press Herald has had four rounds of layoffs in the last 12 months. It has also closed bureaus, including its state house bureau in Augusta, and merged sections. The paper's parent company is saddled with debt, and newsroom staff members say morale has been at an all-time low.

Even in its diminished form, the paper serves a vital function, many here believe. Jaya Punjabi, who opened Maine's first Indian grocery store in South Portland two months ago, said the first thing she did when she opened was to advertise in the Press Herald. A story published last week brought in new customers, she said, and gave the city a small taste of the impact of the city's growing Indian population.

Bill DellaTorre, a carpenter in Portland, said that without the paper he would miss his daily trip to the Silver House Tavern on Commercial Street to take his seat at the end of the bar and flip to the obituaries, "just to make sure my name's not there."

Harris Parnell - who directs Maine's League of Young Voters, which promotes civic engagement - is not sure where she would send her many letters to the editor about local and state politics, if not to the Press Herald.

"Part of a thriving democracy is having a daily paper," Parnell said. "Obviously, we do other, newer media - blogs, e-blasts, and social networking sites - but there would be a huge gap. There would be an information gap."

Some say they feel as though the Press Herald is already dead in some ways. With the closing of the paper's State House bureau earlier this year, there is a sense that no watchdog is keeping tabs on lawmakers, budgets, or the governor.

"There are awful things going on in Augusta that we don't know about," said Al Diamon, a longtime reporter at various media outlets in Maine who now writes a blog for Down East magazine.

With the newsroom staff stretched so thin that most reporters cover at least two beats each, many stories in the Portland area get overlooked, as well, according to the Press Herald's city hall reporter, Elbert Aull.

"It's hard to say what would go uncovered if the paper weren't there," Aull said. "There's so much that's not getting covered right now."

As the Press Herald's reach has waned, others have tried to fill the void. Increasingly, weekly and monthly publications, such as The Bollard, an online alternative magazine that publishes a print edition once a month, and The Portland Forecaster, a weekly tabloid, are scooping the daily and writing edgier, attention-grabbing pieces. Some readers say such outlets more accurately reflect the diverse and bustling city that Portland has become in recent years.

"For some time, it has felt like the paper is a visitor in its own streets and not a resident," Adams said. "They have become more and more detached from the city, distant observers, really."

Despite the declines and the increased competition, the paper is still "the very center of news gathering in Maine" because the Associated Press picks up its stories daily and sends them across the state, Diamon said.

"What most people see or hear when they get up in the morning is what the Press Herald says is news," he said.

Tania deLuzuriaga can be reached at deluzuriaga@globe.com.