Bangor Daily News
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
that was founded on June 18, 1889; in 1900 the paper merged with the Bangor Whig and Courier. The Bangor Publishing Co. publishes the paper in Bangor, Maine
Bangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
, in addition to two weekly papers distributed by the BDN and several others distributed by the Bangor Publishing Co. The Bangor Daily News has local family ownership. The paper's motto is "It's what you need. To know." and it is known colloquially as "the BDN" or "the NEWS."
Coverage Area
The BDN is notable in the newspaper business for having an extremely large coverage area. The BDN's print circulation area covers a large portion of mostly rural Maine that is larger than Connecticut and includes eight of Maine's 16 counties, geographically covering 68% of the state, although the population in that area is less than in the remaining 32%. Online, the BDN has readership throughout the state.Elections
The BDN is the only news organization that collects election numbers for the entire state. On election night, the BDN calls the clerk of each town to get the unofficial numbers and distributes the results to The Associated Press, where national outlets receive the numbers, and other Maine news outlets.Publishing
The BDN publishes online throughout the day, seven days a week, and in print six days a week. In its history, the BDN has only failed to publish once: on December 30, 1962, after an unexpected blizzard buried BangorBangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
under five feet of snow.
The BDN has adopted an agressive online-first publishing strategy, which has led to it becoming the most-read news source in the state. Numbers from online analytics firm Compete.com
Compete.com
Compete.com is a web traffic analysis service of Compete, Inc. which operates in the United States and publishes the approximate number of global visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the world...
show the paper's website gets nearly 300,000 unique visitors per month, making it the largest news site in the state.
Staff
The BDN has bureaus in 10 of 16 counties in Maine, and a sharing agreement with the Sun JournalSun Journal (Lewiston)
The Sun Journal is a daily newspaper published in Lewiston, Maine, USA, covering western Maine.In addition to its main office in Lewiston, the paper maintains satellite news and sales bureaus in the Maine towns of Farmington, Norway and Rumford....
that provides stories from three more counties. In late 2006, cutbacks in the newsroom resulted in early retirements and elimination of some positions. Those who were laid off were reportedly given severance packages. Since then, the BDN has added most of the reporting positions back, though it has cut in other departments. As of August 2011, the BDN employs 70 people in the newsroom, more than any other news outlet in Maine.
Special Sections
Like many newspapers, the BDN has found advertising revenue in the production of special advertising sections. The tabloid-sized sections are inserted into the regular paper and are theme- or advertiser-based. Where many newspapers produce as many as two dozens special sections annually, the BDN produces between 80 and 90 special sections each year, doing so with a staff of three writers and four dedicated sales representatives.Typical themed special sections include the four-part Perspective series each April, highlighting regional business, and the Experience Maine trio of sections, with Summer, Fall and Winter editions. The BDN also produces annual sections for such entities as the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Administration and the Maine Emergency Management Agency.