A new rural government reporter will join the BDN and Maine Monitor
By Michael Shepherd, Bangor Daily News Staff
The Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor will welcome a new Report for America corps member focused on a topic we need more reporting on: rural government.
Daniel O’Connor will join the newsrooms on July 7 as the first reporter jointly hired by the news outlets under a partnership announced earlier this month. He will work predominantly on the BDN’s politics team and will do reporting projects assigned by editors at The Monitor.
“This is an important beat for Maine,” said Dan MacLeod, executive editor of the BDN. “We’re excited to partner with the Monitor to provide more communities with quality reporting.”
“We’re thrilled to expand reporting for Maine with this new corps member. As a Report for America alumna, I can attest to how transformational this program is for young journalists and the communities they serve,” said Kate Cough, editor of The Monitor.
The BDN applied for the position to expand on its recent work covering communities outside of its legacy coverage area. Our “Democracy Project” series of 2024 highlighted how nationalized politics is reshaping local government and institutions. It was inspired by essential coverage of problems maintaining government services from The Forks to Passadumkeag.
The new position will focus on local institutions and their intersections with thorny nationalized political issues. School boards have become battlegrounds over social issues. Students are struggling with low test scores. Cities and towns are finding it harder to attract and maintain the staff that make the services closest to the Maine people run.
O’Connor comes to Maine after covering politics and other topics as a freelance writer for two years while pursuing his master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York City. He is a 2023 graduate of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, where he studied journalism.
At Columbia, O’Connor got a Scripps Howard Foundation grant for reporting on religion in Ireland. He has written as a freelancer for outlets, including the New Jersey Monitor and interned with Politico at the State House in Trenton while at Seton Hall.
“I’m excited to join the team,” he said. “I’m new to Maine but I can’t wait to get to know and serve its communities.”
All placements under the Report for America program are for at least two years with an option for a third. Also in this year’s class are Sean Scott, who will cover religion for The Monitor, and Reuben Schafir, who will cover Indigenous communities in Maine for the Portland Press Herald and its sister papers under the nonprofit Maine Trust for Local News.
Report for America has placed 750 journalists in newsrooms across the country since it was founded in 2017. It pays half the salaries of its members, while the BDN and Monitor will share the rest of the costs alongside support from local donors.