In the January edition of The Maine Monitor Radio Hour, deputy editor Stephanie McFeeters speaks to Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting executive director Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm and Monitor Local editor Judy Meyer about the newsroom’s new local reporting initiative in western and downeast Maine, diving into the origins of the idea and what coverage has looked like so far.
Monitor Local is a reporting initiative to meet the local information needs of people in towns across western and downeast Maine with public service reporting on town council meetings, school budget debates, zoning conversations, tax deliberations and more. It functions alongside The Maine Monitor’s investigative and in-depth reporting to serve the people of Maine.
In the episode, Meyer speaks about the response Monitor Local has begun to see in local communities, pointing to Washington County’s budget crisis as an example.
When the Monitor Local team started covering the budget crisis, people across the county had a lot of unanswered questions about what was going on and why, she said.
“They were confused about what they had to pay back, and over the last two and a half months, I’ve seen people go from being angry to being frustrated to almost accepting this is their fate and how are they going to deal with it,” Meyer said. “So I think providing information in an explanatory way has helped settle down some of that.”
She also speaks about the impact Monitor Local is having through its reporting on the Maine Library Commission’s attempt to set new standards for public libraries, and the outcry they initially caused.
The Monitor Local initiative is made possible with grant support from Journalism New England, a startup non-profit organization working to build and sustain local news.
You can listen to the episode here. Tune in to listen live the first Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. on WERU 89.9 FM.
