Notices went up in some stores around Greater Portland today announcing that the Portland Press Herald is raising its cover price from seventy-five cents to a dollar, effective October 3. The sheet says the price of the Maine Sunday Telegram, currently $1.75 in southern Maine and $2.00 elsewhere, will not change.

It’s not clear whether prices will also increase at MaineToday Media’s two other dailies in Maine, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and the Kennebec Journal in Augusta.

Look what the wind blew in: The Maine Press Association’s email newsletter of Sept. 22 (it’s not yet posted online) carried the word that the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram will soon have a new managing editor. Cliff Schechtman will take over the position on Oct.

Deal without much appeal: MaineToday Media, the company that owns the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, and the Waterville Typographical Union Local 643, the union that represents thirty-two employees at the KJ, announced on Sept. 21 that they’d agreed on a new four-year contract.

Rich comments: Richard Connor, the CEO of MaineToday Media, doesn’t like the way the news media covered last week’s announcement of buy-outs and possible layoffs at the Portland Press Herald.

Downplaying the downsizing: The Sept. 14 Portland Press Herald carried a business brief about layoffs at Bath Iron Works, where forty-four workers will lose their jobs. But there’s no similar coverage of the announcement on Sept. 13 of forty or more staff reductions at the Press Herald.

News snooze: There are days when the Lewiston Sun Journal is must reading. But all too often, there are the days when it barely exists as a local newspaper.

Some mornings, the Sun Journal offers first-rate reporting from a solid staff of journalists. Other days, it fills it pages with wire copy, badly edited pieces from other Maine papers, and press releases disguised to look like news stories.

I think most press conferences are a waste of reporters’ time. In the course of the average year in Maine, there might be a half dozen of them that would be worth attending for something other than canned comments, carefully prepared answers to easily anticipated questions, and boring video of people standing at a rostrum with incomprehensible charts.

Digital manipulation: MaineToday Media – which owns the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel – has created a new subsidiary, MaineToday Digital. According to a story published in the company’s newspapers on Sept. 4, MTD will be “a marketing agency specializing in new media.”

Off line: The Portland Daily Sun does at least one thing better than any other newspaper in the state. The Sun posts all corrections online.

Ordway’s odd way: The late Bob Ganley knew how to deal with reporters and columnists with whom he disagreed. Ganley, Portland’s city manager from 1986 until his unexpected death in 2000, called up the errant journalists or confronted them face to face, and told them exactly why he didn’t like what they’d written.

Then, he got over it.