BDN wins Maine’s best daily newspaper, Loftus named journalist of the year

By Lindsay Putnam, Bangor Daily News Staff

The Bangor Daily News won the top honor of Maine’s best daily newspaper and reporter Sawyer Loftus was named the state’s journalist of the year at the Maine Press Association’s annual conference Saturday, Oct. 19 in Bar Harbor.

Longtime sports reporter Larry Mahoney was also inducted into the Maine Press Association’s Hall of Fame earlier in the day. 

“Maine readers are lucky to have such high-quality journalism at their disposal,” members of the Nebraska Press Association, who judged the contest, wrote of the BDN. “The Daily News uses catchy headlines, compelling ledes, well-designed and well-written stories that tell the story from the perspective of those most affected.”

The judges also praised the BDN for its “top-notch” reporting of the mass shooting in Lewiston.

“This award belongs to our talented and dedicated staff who work hard every day to seek the truth, report it and deliver it to our audience,” said Dan MacLeod, executive editor of the BDN. “I’m proud to work with such incredible people.”

The BDN was runner-up for digital excellence among Maine’s daily newspapers.

A BDN weekly newspaper, the Star-Herald, also won general excellence for weekly print newspapers.

Staff members took home a number of individual awards. George Danby took top honors in Editorial Cartoonist for the BDN, while Amy Allen received a first-place award for Best Supplemental Cover. 

Second-place winners included photographer Linda Coan O’Kresik, editor Michael Shepherd and reporters Emily Burnham and Jules Walkup. Third-place winners included photographers O’Kresik and Troy R. Bennett and reporters Burnham and Lori Valigra. 

At the BDN’s weekly newspapers, Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli, Paula Brewer and Melissa Lizotte each won four-first place awards, while Stuart Hedstrom received two and Chris Bouchard one.

Loftus, an investigative reporter on the BDN’s Maine Focus team, was named Maine’s journalist of the year, the top individual award given at the conference. 

Loftus joined the paper in June 2021 as a reporter for the Penobscot Times, and soon after joined the BDN’s City Desk team covering Greater Bangor. He joined the Maine Focus investigative team in 2022. 

Throughout that time, he’s reported stories that have had measurable impact, as Maine Focus Editor Erin Rhoda outlined in her nomination of Loftus for the award. His stories have resulted in the arrest of the same property manager two times, exposed the unethical dealings of a county official that led to the dissolution of a lobbying contract, and revealed for the first time the questionable actions of a police officer who shot a suicidal man who did not have a gun.

Most recently, Loftus was one of the newsroom’s leading reporters covering Maine’s deadliest mass shooting in Lewiston. Among those stories was one that featured interviews with Card’s fellow reservists that included details that had never been made public before about Card’s life before the shooting. 

“Sawyer is drawn to hard, complicated stories,” Rhoda wrote in her nomination letter. “He aims to hold those in power accountable and help advance informed conversations around some of the biggest issues facing Maine. For his work ethic, his compassion and his tenacity, he deserves to be Maine’s journalist of the year.”

“Sawyer has done tremendous work every year since arriving at the BDN,” MacLeod said. “He was a crucial member of our team that did extraordinary work covering the Lewiston shooting. He’s also a generous colleague and we’re all so thrilled for him.” 

Mahoney was honored at a luncheon earlier in the day for his induction into the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame. 

Mahoney joined the BDN on Sept. 7, 1973, first as a clerk answering call-ins and writing recaps of local high school sporting events before becoming a full-time staff writer after college.

His career predates many of the sports and teams he reports on today. He covered the first high school field hockey state championship games in 1976, and he has been the beat writer for the University of Maine men’s hockey team since its inception as a varsity sport in the 1970s. 

In recent years, Mahoney has broken news including the resignation of the UMaine women’s hockey coach and the hiring of UMaine’s latest athletic director.

His prolific career — which likely exceeds 30,000 bylines — includes being named Maine Sportswriter of the Year by national media associations six times. Mahoney has also served as the radio color commentator for UMaine hockey games for close to 20 years.

Most importantly, he’s best known as being a kind and generous reporter, colleague and friend.

“I’ve never met anyone as compassionate as Larry, who seemingly remembers every name, every birthday and every anniversary,” Chief News Editor Lindsay Putnam wrote in her nomination of Mahoney to the hall of fame. “And listening to him on the phone with a source for a story is an invaluable example for younger journalists because he doesn’t just extract information, but builds a lasting relationship with that person.”

Mahoney was joined at the induction ceremony by his wife, Sally; his sons, Mike and Andrew; and a number of other family members and past and present colleagues.