The family-owned newspaper group whose flagship is the Sun Journal of Lewiston, Maine, is being sold as of Aug. 1 to SJ Acquisition, which is controlled by RFB Holdings, owner of MaineToday Media, Alliance Press in Brunswick, Maine, and Courier Publications, based in Rockland, Maine.
“After four generations of family ownership, selling Sun Media Group was a difficult decision for the Costello family,” said Steve Costello, vice president of advertising and marketing, on behalf of the Costello family. “The decision was made after many discussions by the family, together with our outside board of directors, and we determined that the company could best succeed in an organization with broader resources and reach.
“Reade Brower, owner of RFB Holdings, shares our belief in a bright future for the community newspaper business, one that includes printed products as well as exciting new products and services made possible in our continually evolving digital world,” Costello said.
Sun Media Group has grown from one daily newspaper based in Lewiston whose origin dates to 1861 to owning and operating 17 publications, all in Maine. They are the Sun Journal; the Forecaster and Current Publications, based in Falmouth and with the following editions: The Portland Forecaster, Northern Forecaster, Mid-Coast Forecaster, Southern Forecaster, the American Journal of Westbrook and the Lakes Region Weekly; the Advertiser Democrat of Norway; the Rumford Falls Times; The Bethel Citizen; The Franklin Journal of Farmington; the Livermore Falls Advertiser; The Rangeley Highlander; The Penobscot Times of Old Town; Maine Women Magazine, 95 North and My Gen magazines, all based in Falmouth. Sun Press, a commercial printing division in Lewiston, is also part of Sun Media Group.
RFB Holdings’ Maine print and online publications and printing services include MaineToday Media, made up of the Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram of Portland, Kennebec Journal of Augusta, Morning Sentinel of Waterville, and Coastal Journal of Bath; Courier Publications, made up of The Courier-Gazette of Rockland, The Camden Herald, and The Republican Journal of Belfast; VillageSoup.com; VSTV, based in Rockport; The Free Press of Rockland; RFB Print Co-Op, based in Rockland; Alliance Press in Brunswick; and specialty publications, including travelMaine, based in Rockport, and TREB (The Real Estate Books) of Mid-Coast Maine, Portland and Portsmouth, N.H. RFB also owns the Rutland Herald and The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, both in Vermont,
Brower said: “It is an honor to become the next steward of the Sun Media Group brands as I have great respect for the Costello family. We are focused on a smooth transition and pledge to continue the traditions established by four generations of the Costello family serving readers and the community.”
Lisa DeSisto, chief executive officer and publisher of MaineToday Media, will also be chief executive officer for Sun Media Group.
“We have been collaborating with Sun Media Group for years in printing, distribution and digital services. This acquisition gives Sun Media Group and MaineToday Media even more opportunities to collaborate while maintaining the distinct and trusted brands of each company. We are excited to work with the Sun Media Group team to see all we can accomplish together,” she said.
Costello said: “Our family takes great pride in our award-winning publications and in the talented and dedicated employees with whom we have worked through the generations. We are also enormously thankful for the support and loyalty of our readers through the years.
“We have been committed stewards of Sun Media Group and we felt strongly that the new owner needed to reflect our community journalism values as well as the responsibility we feel to our employees and the communities we serve. We found what we believe to be the best fit in RFB Holdings, a strong, Maine-owned company with similar values and the resources and expertise to maintain and develop what we have built.
“Throughout our four generations of family newspaper ownership, we have appreciated the privilege of serving the communities of Central and Southern Maine, and we continue to be extremely grateful for their support. By combining the resources available at Sun Media Group and RFB Holdings, community news, community sports, digital platforms and advertising services will be enhanced with expanded coverage throughout the region,” Costello said.
The sale of the Sun Media Group assets is scheduled to close Aug. 1 according to John Cribb and Randy Cope of Cribb, Greene & Cope, representing the Costello family. Cribb, Greene & Cope is a merger and acquisition firm with offices in Montana, Virginia, and Missouri.
The story is based on information from a press release by Sun Media Group.
Montana millionaire charged with journalist assault – and headed for Congress?
Gene Policinski
Inside the First Amendment
Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and senior vice president of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. He can be reached at gpolicinski@newseum.org.
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@genefac
Sadly, shamefully, disgustingly, it has come to this: A Montana candidate for Congress was charged recently with assaulting a reporter who was asking him a question about the American Health Care Act.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported that U.S. House candidate Greg Gianforte, a Republican, was charged with misdemeanor assault for what witnesses and the reporter involved said was an unwarranted attack.
Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, who has reported for weeks on the state’s close race for its only House seat, tweeted that “Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses.”
Gianforte’s campaign issued its own statement, claiming Jacobs had entered an office where a TV taping was being set up, “aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg’s face, and began asking badgering questions.” The statement claimed that both men fell to the floor in a struggle over Jacob’s cellphone, and that “this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene.”
Too bad for that set of “alternative facts” that several witnesses — including a Fox News television crew — were on hand to dispute them.
A Fox News reporter wrote that “Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him … I watched in disbelief as Gianforte then began punching the man, as he moved on top of the reporter and began yelling something to the effect of ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’”
Three of Montana’s major newspapers, The Billings Gazette, The Missoulian and The Helena Independent Record, quickly got “sick and tired” of Gianforte: By the morning after the incident, on the day of the state’s special congressional election, all three rescinded their endorsements of the GOP candidate.
We all should be “sick and tired” of attacks on journalists in recent weeks, from this Montana mess to a “manhandling” of a reporter by security guards after an FCC hearing, to the arrest of a public radio reporter in the West Virginia statehouse.
The incidents have much in common: The journalists were asking questions of public officials or candidates for office, outside the staged, controlled environments of news conferences. In each case, the journalists were labeled aggressors by those they were attempting to question.
Many defenders of a free press see all three incidents flowing from the stridently anti-press tone set by President Trump, both in office and on the campaign trail. He has called journalists “enemies of the people,” and on occasion verbally abused specific reporters at rallies and news conferences. The Gianforte account took pains to label Jacobs as a “liberal journalist,” continuing the candidate’s anti-press stance through a campaign that has drawn comparisons to Trump’s. In an effort to give Gianforte a boost in Montana’s close congressional race, Trump recorded a robocall in which he calls Gianforte “my good friend.”
For those who are more inclined to view politics as an opportunity for mud-slinging and chest-beating, rather than a spirited exchange of ideas, the Montana attack no doubt will produce appreciative chuckles and nods of endorsement.
Do not be fooled. It’s democracy that got “body slammed” in the Montana incident. It’s respect for the rule of law that was dealt a blow. It’s the First Amendment that was insulted by Gianforte’s attempt to justify what he did: attacking a reporter for asking a reasonable question, on a matter of great public interest, to a political candidate on the eve of an important election.
This recent spate of attacks is not the first time journalists have been hassled by thugs and bully-boys, or by security forces. Multiple attacks and beatings occurred as reporters and television correspondents covered the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s. Reporters covering the “Occupy” movement in recent years were hustled aside or held by police looking to prevent news coverage of protesters being forcibly removed from parks in New York City and elsewhere.
At national political conventions, journalist arrests have become so common that national press organizations regularly set up phone banks and offices to help individual reporters who have been taken into custody without cause.
Dangers to a free press have deep roots in this country. Just seven years after the 1791 ratification of the Bill of Rights, Congress passed the Sedition Act, allowing for the arrest and jailing of journalists for publishing political criticism. About 20 editors were thrown into jail.
In the Newseum in Washington, D.C., where I work, there is the starkly tragic exhibit of a lone Datsun sedan — notable because the floorboards at the driver’s seat are peeled up, the result of an explosion that fatally injured Phoenix newspaper reporter Don Bolles in 1976. A remotely detonated bomb had been planted by mobsters seeking to stop Bolles from reporting on organized crime in Arizona. The attack had the opposite effect, as reporters nationwide flocked to Phoenix to complete Bolles’ work, proclaiming that “you can kill a journalist but not journalism.”
The fear is now real that — as we saw after fake reports of a child sex ring in a Washington, D.C., restaurant prompted an armed man to appear on the premises — some disturbed person will decide to counter reporters with more than a “body slam.”
Let’s say again, for the sake of the nonpartisan, nonpolitical 45 words of the First Amendment, that this pattern of verbal abuse and physical attacks on journalists is an attack on all Americans, and that that these attacks must stop.