Maine newspaper group will consolidate printing operations, stop Lewiston press
The Sun Journal, a daily newspaper printed in Lewiston for 125 years, is stopping the press.
Beginning June 1, the paper said in a news article, it will be published at and distributed from the South Portland facility of Masthead Maine, the media group that purchased the Sun Journal in 2017 and owns 29 other news publications across the state.
With the move, the South Portland plant will print all five of Maine’s daily papers. They comprise the Bangor Daily News, which contracts its printing to the Lewiston press, and four dailies owned by Masthead Maine: the Kennebec Journal, based in Augusta; the Morning Sentinel, based in Waterville; the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram; and the Times Record, based in Brunswick.
The move affects 45 Sun Journal workers, including 11 full-time pressroom employees who have already been offered jobs in South Portland, Masthead Maine Publisher and CEO Lisa DeSisto said in the article.
The Sun Journal and its affiliated weekly papers make up Sun Media Group, which has over 140 employees. The group’s newsroom, circulation and advertising departments will remain in downtown Lewiston at 104 Park St.
Mainebiz, owned by New England Business Media, is printed in Springfield, Mass.
At Masthead Maine, DeSisto said the cost of running Lewiston’s 45-year-old press made the consolidation necessary.
“This move was driven by the equipment and the fact that it doesn’t make sense to invest in two different facilities when we have the capacity at one shop and we know the Lewiston equipment is continuing to age,” she said. “The press crew in Lewiston has done an amazing job printing high quality on that equipment. This is driven by what makes sense from a financial perspective for the future.”
Sun Media Group General Manager Jody Jalbert added, “It is going to be an emotional day when the presses run for the last time here in Lewiston; it is an end of an era.”
The press area in Lewiston will become a circulation depot for paper carriers, and some of the distribution equipment there will go to the South Portland plant, at 295 Gannett Drive.
The Sun Journal traces its roots to 1847, when Lewiston’s first newspaper, the Lewiston Falls Journal, began publishing. The weekly competed with the Lewiston Daily Sun, which began in the 1890s.
Another longstanding daily owned by Masthead Maine, the Biddeford-based Journal Tribune, ceased publication in October 2019. In March 2020, Masthead Maine eliminated the Monday printed editions of all its dailies except the Times Record.
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