There’s a new, bustling cafe on Mechanic Street in Camden, where visitors can grab lunch and coffee.
It’s also the only eatery in the state — possibly even the nation — where they can expect to speak regularly with reporters, editors, the publisher and owner of the region’s local paper.
In September of last year, four legacy midcoast papers — the Free Press, Camden Herald, Republican Journal and Courier-Gazette — joined together into the Midcoast Villager. The papers, along with the associated Village Soup websites, currently belong to Reade Brower, a media mogul who, until recently, also owned many other newspapers throughout the state.
Opening the Villager Cafe is a risky move, given the well-known struggles facing both the news and restaurant industries. Print publications have struggled through years of declining revenues as Americans get more of their information from social media and other platforms. Restaurants have faced their own share of upheaval and turnover since the start of the COVID pandemic.
But Brower’s decision to open a cafe connected to a newspaper wasn’t hasty, and if anything, he thinks it could be a path forward for news organizations trying to distinguish themselves in an increasingly polarized society.
During an interview on Friday, Brower said he’s been considering the idea for about four years. When sitting down with his business partner several years ago, they discussed what the news industry would look like in a decade, and developed a vision of introducing human connection.
“I believe that the job of a newspaper is not the same as it was 35, 40 years ago when I started this business,” Brower said. “People get their information from so many different places now, that Facebook and social media take a lot of that burden away from newspapers, but they don’t connect people in the humanistic [way].”
Since the Villager Cafe opened about two weeks ago, it has been successful on several fronts, according to the Midcoast Villager’s publisher, Aaron Britt. The food and coffee are good, and readers are already using it to engage with the reporters, he said. On Fridays, the cafe hosts “Fresh Brewed News,” a time in which the community can come together and discuss the Thursday paper and ask the staff questions. Britt also said editors will have office hours in the cafe about once a month.
The staff often pops into the cafe to work, meet and grab lunch, as well.
The restaurant isn’t the only innovation the newly consolidated news organization is trying. For example, on the opposite end of the technology spectrum, it’s also partnering with Civic Sunlight, an AI startup that provides summaries and transcripts of public meetings via email.
But the goal of the cafe, Britt said, is to provide a physical space for the community that feels welcoming and comfortable. As news consumption migrates more and more to digital platforms, Britt said the endless scrolling can feel lonely. He hopes connecting the paper with the community can help readers understand the decisions behind what goes into making it, and the staff can learn what readers want from them.
A reader came up to Britt in the cafe on Thursday, he said, and the publisher asked what the paper could do better. The reader immediately gave feedback, saying he wanted to see more outdoors coverage.
“To me, that was super valuable, and it’s because he came up and introduced himself, but also because we have created an environment where that feels like a very natural sort of thing,” Britt said. “Like this dude probably wouldn’t have walked up the flight of stairs, come into our office, ask the receptionist where my desk is, and then come and yak to me while I sat at my desk, you know?”
It’s undeniable that the cafe has opened at a volatile time for both local media and restaurants.
The number of local papers across the country continues to drop, with more than two closing per week in 2023. Operating a restaurant isn’t easy, either.
But Brower said even if the cafe doesn’t make much money, it’ll be successful if it helps support the paper.
“If this place weren’t making money, but it was doing so much to drive memberships and subscriptions and merchandise and just being a community asset, this place is a success,” Brower said.
Brower owns a few other businesses, including two other newspapers further east along the coast, The Ellsworth American and the Mount Desert Islander, as well as the book publisher Islandport Press. He said that the cafe is its own separate business entity, so if it starts losing money, it would not directly affect any of the others. And he noted that it has helped to further diversify his income.
Though the cafe is just getting off the ground, both Brower and Britt have big plans for the future. They want to open more cafe outposts across their coverage area. Brower wants the Villager Cafe to become a traditional newsstand as well, selling not only the Midcoast Villager paper, but newspapers from all over the world. Locals can rent out the space for events.
“There has always been this ambition to create a space to bring the news to life — for a paper, a website, to have an embodied presence in the community,” Britt said. “The Villager ought to be a prism through which people can experience and understand their community and thus more deeply engage in it.”
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.