If you grew up doing the Portland Press Herald crossword, reading “How Joe the Bear and Sam the Mouse got together” over and over because it was that good, reading the dictionary page by page for the etymologies, playing Scrabble for hours, playing a pun game on road trips, observing and talking with people of all walks and ages while on those trips or while back home bowling every day at Yankee Lanes in Brunswick, and watching the national news with your family every night like people did then, maybe you, too, have wound up in reporting, interviewing people, about half who like your questions and half who wish you would not ask them. 

I have been working at The Boothbay Register-Wiscasset Newspaper 15 years last month. Much of the job has moved from reporting to behind the scenes, in editing, which, I have learned, under the priceless tutelage of Editor Kevin Burnham and other great colleagues, is about 40% copy editing and 60% planning for print and web, internal and external communication, judgment, reserve, and having people ask if you still work for the paper because they do not see your byline nearly as much. Yes, yes, I do. 

When you are not seeing my byline, just know I am one of the people working every day and sometimes nights to share the news and life experiences of your town, as much as we can, as swiftly as we can, but most of all fairly. Local news is fairly hard work, usually interesting and always an honor.

I am well into the second half of life and work, not as obsessed as I was in my years covering homicides for Maine radio stations, papers and sometimes Associated Press or United Press International (UPI).

I got an associate’s in art, as in fine arts, from University of Maine at Augusta and a bachelor’s in communication, emphasis on mass communication, from University of Southern Maine; stood on the lawn of Walker’s Point in a press conference with then-President George H.W. Bush, ridden with Wolf Blitzer in a motorcade up Route One when then-President Bill Clinton flew into then-Naval Air Station Brunswick and visited Bath Iron Works; hearing from George Mitchell he was the next majority leader in the U.S. Senate; interviewed accused and convicted murderers; testified for the prosecution in a murder trial because the defendant I had interviewed did not want a hold up in his trial; waited with families near the shore or woods when their child’s body was being recovered; interviewed people about medical nightmares, amazing accomplishments and what they do for fun around here; and, among my favorite all-time assignments since I started in news in the ’80s, did a pair of one-on-one interviews in Portland with figure skaters Brian Boitano and Katerina Witt after they won Olympic gold; and was in Dresden when multiple agencies’ search by water, air and ground ended with a missing boy’s being found alive.

That was a good day in Midcoast Maine, and a good day to be a reporter. 

Reach me at 207 844-4633 or susanjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com