Short-Lived Newspaper War in Portland Ends With Dig Closure
For more than a decade, DigBoston and The Boston Phoenix competed as alternative newsweeklies in and around the Hub before the Phoenix folded in early 2013. When DigPortland launched late last year opposite The Portland Phoenix, the rivalry was renewed in Maine.
It lasted nowhere near as long. After just two months of publishing, DigPortland shuttered suddenly last Monday when it agreed to be bought out by the Phoenix.
Here’s a little bit of background: In October, Dig publisher Jeff Lawrence announced he would launch a paper in Portland, marking his first go at expansion since publishing began in Boston in 1999. The announcement came shortly after The Providence Phoenix had closed, leaving Portland as the last Phoenix standing in Stephen Mindich’s chain. That was also around the time that an employee-led effort to buy the 15-year-old Portland Phoenix fell apart, leaving its future in question.
Lawrence began recruiting Portland Phoenix employees to join the Dig. In mid-November, the Phoenix found a surprise buyer in the form of Portland Daily Sun publisher Portland News Club. On the same day, nearly every Phoenix employee joined the Dig. The Phoenix, for its part, quickly installed a new staff. With an editorial team led by a couple of veteran Maine journalists, it never missed a publishing date. The first issue of DigPortland and the first Phoenix published by Portland News Club hit news boxes the same week.
It was a weird dynamic, with the new entrant—the Dig—staffed by employees who had been at the Phoenix a week before, while the established Phoenix was under new management entirely.
It wasn’t long before the Phoenix’s new owners brought a lawsuit alleging, in part, that a former employee had taken confidential information when he went to the Dig. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Lawrence was defiant, telling The Bangor Daily News on December 1: “We will vigorously defend ourselves and potentially look into filing a counter-lawsuit because of these frivolous claims.’’ Lawrence argued at the time that all the Dig needed to do in order to recruit Phoenix advertisers was to flip through the paper’s pages. He said that noncompete clauses in Phoenix contracts would have been void under the new paper’s ownership.
But seven weeks later, the Dig had closed up shop.
New Phoenix publisher Mark Guerringue said he was “very serious’’ about the lawsuit, and he claimed to have “computer forensic evidence that strongly pointed’’ to a Phoenix-turned-Dig staff member taking information from the company before he left in November.
Lawrence, though, said the suit, and the prospect that it would drag on at the Dig’s expense, was just a factor in his decision. “The lawsuit was something that was ongoing,’’ he said. But he added that a meeting with Guerringue the week before the closure suggested to him that the competition was preventing either publication from “investing in the market.’’
Lawrence stopped short of saying the market was too small for two papers, but said when he made plans to head north he had expected the Phoenix to close, as it had in Providence and Boston. “I wouldn’t have gone there in the first place,’’ Lawrence said, if he thought the Phoenix would keep publishing.
“They have an established brand,’’ Lawrence said. “And after Mark and I went through everything, it made sense for them to move forward.’’
Guerringue said Lawrence showed the change of heart quickly. “I thought he was ready to dig in his heels,’’ he said. “But we both knew [Portland] couldn’t support two papers.’’
Guerringue agreed with Lawrence that the competition wasn’t entirely anticipated. “It really is a story of timing and coincidence, to wind up in a newspaper war neither one wanted to be in,’’ he said. “If the Dig had launched before I got there, the momentum would have swung the other way,’’ he added.
Both parties declined to comment on the terms of the sale.
Meanwhile, the Dig staffers that left the Phoenix in November are out of a job. Lawrence said that amounts to six people who filled editorial, sales, and administrative roles. They were not offered severance packages, and they learned of the abrupt and immediate end of their tenures last Monday morning, said Nick Schroeder, the editor of the Dig who had previously edited the Phoenix.
Schroeder said he isn’t angry, but “shocked’’ and “disappointed’’ in how things went. “It’s not fair to wholly direct the blame on any one person,’’ he said. From Schroeder’s perspective—and he said it’s one of speculation—the lawsuit against the Dig is directly responsible for the sudden closure.
“My understanding was that it would not be a problem if it went to trial,’’ he said, a sentiment at odds with Guerringue’s. “It’s too bad it came down to the legal issues. … [DigPortland] could not keep up with the amount of money the Phoenix was able to put into funding the lawsuit.’’
Schroeder added that though the closure caught him off-guard, he had noticed some “small money (issues)’’ at the Dig. For instance, he said, his Dig paychecks were a day or two late in the final few weeks of publishing.
Schroeder said he doesn’t regret the decision to switch papers in November.
“It was a choice between these two entities, neither of which I knew very much about,’’ he said. “The Dig had a plan in place to fund a paper. They ultimately did not anticipate [the challenges].’’ (Other Dig writers were less forgiving, saying they felt “a sense of betrayal,’’ and that they had been “had.’’)
Schroeder said he was not interested in returning to the Phoenix. And in any event, Guerringue said the Phoenix isn’t hiring. His company recently folded the Daily Sun, its existing property in Portland, to focus on the Phoenix, rolling the Sun’s small staff in to his new paper.
For now, Schroeder is focusing on a theatrical production that he had been working on while also running Dig. Down the line, he doesn’t seem so convinced that Portland has to be a one-alt-weekly town. “I think there’s room for something that can represent the city and where it’s going, and I want to be involved in it,’’ he said.
Guerringue said he is willing to chat with any of the Dig’s employees for informational purposes. He also said he hopes that Dig’s stable of freelancers, most of whom came over from the Phoenix, will start writing for the paper again.
The weaving relationship between the two publications in Portland may take another turn. Both Lawrence and Guerringue said they are exploring the idea that Lawrence could do some consulting work to develop the Phoenix’s web and social media presence.
At news boxes, though, one paper has left town about as quickly as it got there. “I do look at it as a win-loss,’’ Guerringue said. “We won, and they lost.’’
Disclosure: I have done some freelance work for DigBoston in the past, most recently in November 2013.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com