The Maine Monitor, with support from Maine newspaper and academic partners, hosted free screenings of the documentary Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink in Waterville, Ellsworth, and Biddeford this week.
The screenings, which drew nearly 200 attendees, were followed by discussions with the filmmaker, Rick Goldsmith.
The Monitor also brought Goldsmith to speak to dozens of students at two middle schools and two high schools in Belfast and Bangor, as well as community members at the Belfast Rotary Club. At the University of New England, Goldsmith sat for a television interview with the university’s media and communications students.
Goldsmith’s film digs into the hedge fund Alden Global Capital’s takeover of American newspapers and its bleeding of those newspapers for maximum profit, with no regard for the journalism or the public service those newspapers provide for their communities.
The film follows the journalists fighting back — through investigative reporting, editorials, protests, and new, independent journalism ventures.
At the screenings, audience members asked Goldsmith what lessons he learned about new models for local news. Goldsmith observed that what worked best varied from community to community and said Maine was a perfect example of this, noting the strong efforts to secure and revive local journalism in the state. He urged audiences, young and old, to support local journalism by reading the news and by subscribing or donating.
Supporting partners included the Bangor Daily News, the Ellsworth American and Mount Desert Islander, WERU, Saco Bay News, Colby College Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs, the University of New England, and the College of the Atlantic.
Ahead of the screenings, Goldsmith participated in an interview with Matt Murphy of WERU and Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting executive director Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm. Listen to that interview.
