Welcome to the Bangor Daily News newsroom!
The newsroom is home base for our photographers and reporters who cover Bangor and surrounding communities, including sports, and specialty reporters who cover business, medicine and health, and the environment. It also is where their assignment editors work, along with two other assignment editors who are responsible for the reporters in our eight bureaus. News that is generated by this staff during the day and evening is edited and placed in pages designed by copy editors who put the paper together at night so it can be sent to the press on deadlines based on the time you have your paper available to you either through home delivery or at your local store.
Getting out the news requires research, and a librarian and one assistant keep track of past stories, update our news and photo archives daily, and help the staff find information beyond our internal system.
One enormous challenge in gathering news is the huge geography of central, eastern and northern Maine. It comprises an area of thousands of square miles, and news stories can occur anywhere in that coverage area.
Bureaus in Houlton, Presque Isle, Calais, Sangerville, Lincoln, Pittsfield, Belfast and Ellsworth allow us to send reporters promptly to virtually any news event in the region. When a big story breaks, photographers are on their way, too. These news teams are coordinated by their editors in Bangor.
Led by the managing editor, assignment editors, including the photo and graphic design editors, gather each weekday morning at 11:30 to discuss the day’s developing stories. The Web editor, who also is responsible for the Bangor Daily News radio news content, sits in on these meetings to gather the lead stories for the afternoon broadcasts and for immediate uploading onto bangordailynews.com.
A second meeting of the editors, joined by members of the copy desk staff, the sports editor and the night editor, is held at 4:30 p.m. to discuss the top stories of the day. The managing editor and night editor, in consultation with the other editors, decide placement of stories on the front page, and throughout the paper.