The Maine Trust for Local News (METLN), the nonprofit organization that owns the Portland Press Herald, Lewiston Sun Journal and more than a dozen other regional newspapers, announced on Tuesday that it will be laying off 49 employees and reducing certain print publications as part of a new cost-cutting effort.

METLN will be eliminating 36 full-time and 13 part-time positions, who jointly comprise 13 percent of the organization’s total workforce. In addition, multiple newspapers under the Trust’s control will be either reducing or outright eliminating their print editions.

In its announcement, METLN says the affected departments include print production, distribution and advertising, and that that no reporters or photographers will be included in the current round of layoffs.

Beginning this month, the Trust’s southern Maine weekly papers, including the Forecaster papers, the American Journal, Lakes Region Weekly, Scarborough Leader, South Portland Sentry, Courier in Biddeford and the Kennebunk Post, will all become digital only.

Also starting this month, weekly papers under the Lewiston Sun Journal’s umbrella, such as the Advertiser Democrat, Bethel Citizen, Franklin Journal, Livermore Falls Advertiser, Rangeley Highlander, and Rumsford Falls Times, will be published every other week.

The Lewiston Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel will be see their print runs cut down to five days instead of six, and the Times Record — a midcoast paper focusing on Brunswick and Bath — will go from a twice-a-week publication to a weekly paper published on Friday.

Additionally, the U.S. Postal Service will be delivering the METLN newspapers via same-day mail on Tuesdays through Fridays, rather than newspapers carriers — although home deliveries will continue on Sundays.

The Portland Press Herald, the largest of the Trust’s outlets, will not have any changes to its production or delivery.

“We are deeply grateful to our colleagues for their work to print and deliver the news, and we are doing everything possible to support them through this difficult transition,” Stefanie Manning, managing director for the Maine Trust, said on Tuesday, per the Press Herald.

Manning declined to disclose an exact figure of how much the cuts will save the Trust, but said the reduction in production costs and change in delivery methods will help put the organization on the path toward sustainability.

METLN says that while their print subscriptions and advertising revenue have continued to decline, their digital subscriptions increased by 11 percent and digital advertising grew by 23 percent last year.

The Maine Trust is a subsidiary of the National Trust for Local News, the nonprofit trust that last summer acquired several of Maine’s oldest news brands and daily newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald, Lewiston Sun Journal and Kennebec Journal.

At the time of the National Trust’s acquisition of the Maine news outlets, the nonprofit promised to disclose the funders behind the acquisition, a pledge that has yet to be fulfilled.

A report from digital media outlet Semafor suggested that left-wing billionaire George Soros and Swiss foreign national Hansjörg Wyss were key financial backers of the acquisition.

The news of the substantial cuts at METLN comes after multiple high-level executives have resigned from the Trust’s newspapers in recent months.

Steven Greenlee, executive editor of the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, resigned in July 2024 to take a professorship at Boston University. His departure was closely followed by that of Nita Lelyveld, the Press Herald’s managing editor.

Lisa DeSisto, CEO and publisher of METLN, who had joined what was then MaineToday Media in 2012, and stayed on with the news organization through two ownership transitions and two acquisitions, announced her resignation in December.

DeSisto wrote at the time of her resignation that the METLN “is as strong as it has ever been,” but that the Trust is “not immune to the challenges of our industry” and has been working for the past year and half to “find a path to sustainability.”

Last month, two top publishers and editors at the Lewiston Sun Journal, Jody Jalbert and Judy Meyer, announced that they would be resigning after several decades at the paper.

Business challenges do not seem isolated to the METLN, however, as parent company the National Trust for Local News’ CEO Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro resigned earlier this year after news broke that she had taken a substantial pay increase while the organization was making cuts across the board to stay afloat.