Maine Trust for Local News wins New England First Amendment, Publick Occurrences awards
Sep. 22—PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The New England Newspaper and Press Association awarded the Maine Trust for Local News its New England First Amendment Award on Saturday, recognizing the newspaper group for its exceptional work in upholding the First Amendment.
The 2024 award recognizes the Sun Journal, Portland Press Herald, Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal for their collaboration and relentless pursuit of public records related to the mass shooting in Lewiston last October.
According to NENPA judges, the newsrooms started making public access requests just hours after the shooting and "have been tenacious in their attempts, even partnering with the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School" to gain access to thousands of police records that span from months prior to the shooting, through the 48-hour search for shooter Robert Card, and over the many months since.
"We believe that the enormous and consistent resistance we've encountered has been an effort by Maine State Police and others to shield some police decisions and actions in the months leading up to the shootings and in the shooting aftermath, a belief that was bolstered by the commission's interim — and damning — report released in mid-March," and later revealed in more detail in the commission's final report released last month, explained Judy Meyer, executive editor at several newspapers within the Maine Trust for Local News group.
According to the commission, police had enough information to take Card into protective custody and initiate Maine's "yellow flag" law to take away his weapons prior to the tragedy, and that a Sagadahoc County deputy's failure to take Card into custody in mid-September 2023 was "an abdication of law enforcement's responsibility."
NENPA judges said "we applaud the newspapers' persistent efforts to learn and report what happened, what failings may have occurred, and what, if anything, can be done to prevent another tragedy."
The Maine Trust was also awarded a NENPA Publick Occurrences Award for its collaborative coverage of the mass shooting, an award established in 1990 to recognize individual and team merit at New England newspapers to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of Publick Occurrences, which was the first newspaper published in America.
The award covers six months of reporting, starting with the first report of the shooting on Oct. 25, 2023, the long hours of the search for Card, the discovery of Card's body on Oct. 27, stories about survivors, including four women who had been dining at Schemengees Bar & Grille, a detailed report on movement of police during the search which was based on more than 1,000 dispatch calls in Lewiston, Auburn and Lisbon, the failed wellness check on Card by the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office a month before the shooting, and more.
According to NENPA judges, following the shooting that killed 18 people and injured 13 more, "journalists who are part of the Maine Trust launched continuing, extraordinary efforts to report what had happened, the hunt for the killer, the communities in mourning, and how the murders had affected Maine — even though nearly all requests for public records were denied."
Without much access to law enforcement records, "the journalists worked their sources, and were able to report a great deal about the shooting, the shooter, the people he shot, and the impacts on the community. They responded with maps and timelines and diagrams, and a nearly endless list of police calls filed on the day of the shooting and the two days afterward," reporting on the people who'd been shot and the horror that survivors felt, calling it "an amazing job in the face of daunting obstacles."
In pursuit of these stories, Meyer said "our journalists firmly believe that the public has an absolute and compelling right to know what happened here," as painful as that knowledge has been for so many people.
It was "imperative that the public have timely access to information concerning matters of public concerns and, in particular, this tragedy, which has had a deep and painful impact on countless Maine residents," the Maine Trust noted for NENPA judges, pointing out the "governor herself recognized this urgent need when she issued her Nov. 9 executive order establishing the commission" just two weeks after the shooting.
The Maine Trust awards were accepted by Marla Hoffman, a Sun Journal managing editor, during NENPA's annual fall conference held in Providence, Rhode Island.
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