Maine Monitor deputy editor Stephanie McFeeters to serve as interim editor this fall.
Erin Rhoda (left) will serve as interim deputy editor this fall for The Maine Monitor while Stephanie McFeeters will serve as interim editor.
The Maine Monitor welcomed a longtime investigative editor and journalist to the newsroom this week, a move that comes as editor Kate Cough prepares to start maternity leave.
Erin Rhoda, who previously led Maine Focus — the investigative team at the Bangor Daily News — for 11 years, has joined The Monitor as interim deputy editor. Stephanie McFeeters, currently The Monitor’s deputy editor, will serve as interim editor in Cough’s absence this fall.
“It is an honor to join The Monitor and work with such dedicated journalists,” said Rhoda. “I am also looking forward to hearing from readers with their tips and perspectives as we do this work for the public.”
Rhoda, who spent 13 years at the BDN, started as the newspaper’s editorial page editor before helping form the newspaper’s investigative team, Maine Focus, in 2014. In addition to being the editor of Maine Focus, she also wrote stories centering on domestic and sexual violence, addiction, police accountability, public health and the future of rural communities.
The Maine Press Association named her its Journalist of the Year in 2016, and two years later her peers selected her as one of Maine’s 10 most trusted journalists. In 2025, the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault named an award after her to recognize her long-term focus on improving and deepening coverage of sexual violence in Maine.
Her team’s journalism frequently drove change. In one example, their in-depth reporting on how county law enforcement officers and a sheriff kept their certifications despite sexually harassing colleagues and prisoners resulted in the greatest expansion in police oversight in Maine in years.
Rhoda’s reporting often drew on the power of human stories. Her two-year project chronicling the life and death of a young man addicted to heroin was cited on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and kicked off community organizing and fundraising that saved lives.
Rhoda grew up on a small farm in Washington, Maine, and now lives in Bangor. Her first full-time reporting job was at the newspaper that covered her hometown and the wider Rockland area, The Courier-Gazette. She later covered rural Somerset County for the Morning Sentinel.
She received the national Mitchell Scholarship to earn her master’s degree in creative writing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, in 2009. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Colby College where she graduated summa cum laude in 2006.
“The whole newsroom is looking forward to benefiting from Erin’s experience and perspective as she steps into an editor role while I am away,” said Cough. “I look forward to late nights enjoying the excellent journalism Stephanie and Erin will lead the newsroom in producing.”
The Maine Monitor is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting. Our team of investigative journalists use data- and document-based reporting to produce stories that have an impact.
Content labeled as “By The Maine Monitor” are written by staff editors and are reserved for newsroom announcements (e.g. stories about accolades earned or welcoming new hires). This content is reviewed and approved by another editor.
