Four Midcoast newspapers owned by businessman Reade Brower – who previously owned the Sun Journal and several other dailies and weeklies throughout Maine – will merge into one publication beginning next month.

Reade Brower. Kevin Bennett photo

In a letter to readers posted online, publisher Kathleen Fleury Capetta said she and Brower have been working on a “new vision for what community media can be” for the last three years.

The Courier-Gazette of Rockland, the Free Press of Camden, the Republican Journal of Belfast and the Camden Herald will merge into one newspaper and website called the Midcoast Villager.

“Our vision is to build a stronger single newspaper for the region – one charged with convening the community, and working together to find solutions to the area’s biggest issues through the power that comes from telling stories,” Capetta wrote.

Just over one year ago, Brower sold most of his newspaper holdings to the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that was founded in 2021 and also owns newspaper chains in Colorado and Georgia.

In addition to the Press Herald, Brower sold the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, the Portland Press Herald in Portland, the Times Record in Brunswick and 17 weekly papers in southern and western Maine, including the Forecaster group.

Brower did not, however, sell his newspapers in the Midcoast, where he lives. The Free Press is the first newspaper Brower founded in 1985.

Capetta praised Brower for his commitment to ensuring newspapers in Maine remain viable.

“Reade’s stewardship of local media in Maine in the last decade has been a true heroic act of patriotism and faith in our collective goodness. It has also been an act of love – for a free press and for all the communities his papers served,” she said.

The merger of the four papers is not shocking given the current media landscape, which has been decimated by a gradual reduction in advertising revenue and competition from social media and alternative digital information sources.

“Yet we fervently believe that we need local media and community now more than ever,” Capetta wrote. “Emerging from this bleak media landscape is an opportunity, a challenge, and a chance to think big.”

As part of the merger, Brower and Capetta plan to open next year the Villager Cafe, which is intended to be a gathering place that will produce discussions, concerts and other events in conjunction with its journalism.

Capetta previously was the top editor for Down East Magazine and recently returned to Maine after spending time transforming a newspaper company in Grand Cayman Island.