The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, which publishes The Maine Monitor, welcomed Mike Federle as its newest member of the nonprofit news organization’s board of directors this month. The newsroom also announced a partnership with C-SPAN ahead of the November midterm election.
Federle retired as Chief Executive Officer of Forbes Media in January 2025 after seven years of leading the iconic global media brand, and served as a strategic advisor through June 2025. Before being promoted to CEO, Federle served as Forbes Media’s President and Chief Operating Officer beginning in October 2011.
Federle, an alumnus of Colby College in Waterville, built a dynamic and highly profitable growth company during a time of great change in the media business when competitors were struggling. Under his leadership, Forbes used a global licensing strategy that created 46 local editions in 70 countries as well as brand extensions in education, real estate, hospitality, books and professional communities.
A 40-year veteran of the media industry, Federle began his media career at New England Publications in Camden and held top positions at TimeWarner as Publisher of Fortune magazine, and Group Publisher of the Time Inc. Business & Finance Network. Before joining Forbes, Federle was the co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer of start-up Techonomy Media, a multimedia company based in New York. He lives in Freeport with his wife, Lori Schrader.
C-SPAN partnership
In June, C-SPAN announced the launch of Road to the Capitol: Candidate Coverage from the Trail, an initiative to expand its nonpartisan, unfiltered political coverage of the 2026 midterm elections. The Monitor joined the initiative as a participating local newsroom earlier this month.
C-SPAN is embedding multimedia journalists in key battleground regions to cover competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial races across Maine and nine other states. C-SPAN’s journalists will capture full video of campaign events in Maine and share that coverage, including key-moment clips and transcripts, with The Monitor and other outlets that are part of the initiative.
The initiative, C-SPAN said in a press release, addresses a growing multimedia gap in local political journalism as many communities across the nation lack consistent, on-the-ground video coverage of their competitive House, Senate and governor races.
