Excited to welcome Alex Steed and Carol McCracken to the BDN family

In case you’ve missed it over the last few weeks, there are a couple of noteworthy new faces popping up in the BDN Portland blogosphere, and I’m truly excited to welcome them.

Alex Steed, with his new blog Bourbon. Portland. Beer. Politics., and Carol McCracken, bringing into the BDN universe her longstanding Munjoy Hill News site, bring new dimensions to our coverage of Maine’s largest city. When added to the BDN staffers in the area — photographer Troy R. Bennett, Business Editor Whit Richardson, Health Editor Jackie Farwell, reporter Christopher Cousins and myself — as well as our media partners at The Forecaster and Chris Busby‘s The Bollard, I’m really happy about the breadth and depth of southern Maine coverage we can offer.

Alex Steed

Alex is a bona fide star in the Maine media, with his Food Coma TV and previous blogs about politics and living in Portland really building up a base of followers that we can already tell have continued to follow him all the way to the BDN. Bringing Alex aboard is a major boost to the BDN’s gravitas in the southern part of the state. It’s only been a few weeks, and Alex has already whipped up the debate with a list of Portland’s top famous/infamous characters, and that’s not all, of course. I find Bourbon. Portland. Beer. Politics. to be must-read material if you want to stay plugged in to Portland, whether you’re a foodie, local music lover, political junkie or just a cat about town.

Carol McCracken

Carol is a news hound, pure and simple, and she was one of the first in the Portland news scene to welcome me to the area when the BDN brought me aboard about 13 months ago. I began to notice that, as I covered the city, everywhere news was happening, Carol was present. Sometimes she was present and I wasn’t. I saw a trend in which many of what became major news stories in the mainstream Portland media — my own outlet included — could be found on Carol’s blog first. So, in the spirit of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” I’m thrilled Carol will be breaking those stories on the BDN site now.

Seth Koenig

About Seth Koenig

Seth has nearly a decade of professional journalism experience and writes about the greater Portland region.