"Environmental issues tend to be more than the headline," says Curt Spalding, executive director of Save The Bay, explaining the need for Northern Sky News, a five-month-old environmental newspaper covering New England and the Canadian maritime provinces.

Started in May by environmental writer Murray Carpenter, Northern Sky News is published monthly from Belfast, Maine. The 12-page tabloid has featured articles on mountain lion sightings, a Nantucket offshore wind power project, the decommissioning of the Maine Yankee power plant, and sprawl in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Spalding salutes the paper's presence, saying the kind of in-depth environmental reporting it offers is often missing from larger newspapers and television.

The goal of the paper, says Carpenter, is to exchange ideas between states and provinces that are part of the same small section of the Earth. "We're all dealing with different permutations of the same problems -- growth, energy, air pollution," he explains.

Content in the first four issues has been dominated by material from Maine, where most of the current subscribers reside, Carpenter says. Articles on Narragansett Bay jellyfish, Lyme disease legislation in Rhode Island, and the Ocean State's new commercial fishing law, have been supplied by University of Rhode Island public relations officer Todd McLeish and this reporter. Other regular contributors include longtime Maine Times environmental writer Phyllis Austin, Boston Globe freelance science writer Wendy Williams, former Kennebec Journal editorial page editor Doug Rooks, and Nova Scotia writer Jodi DeLong.

The August issue has no advertisements, the customary source of about 80 percent of a newspaper's revenue. Carpenter, however, expects the bulk of funds for Northern Sky News to come from subscribers and he hopes to have 500 by the end of the year. "With 4000 subscribers you could make a go of it financially," he says, adding, "It might take four years to get there."

Carpenter expects to pick up some subscribers from the now-defunct Maine Times. The venerable weekly closed this spring after a quarter-decade of providing in-depth environmental reporting. The 40-year-old editor is also investigating the possibility of transforming Northern Sky News into a non-profit publication to qualify for grant funding.

Carpenter, who moved from Montana in 1995 to work for the Republican Journal in Belfast and then the Maine Times, has a Rhode Island connection. His father is Dr. Charles Carpenter of Miriam Hospital.

Subscriptions to the Northern Sky News can be obtained by sending $20 to 94 Union Street, Belfast, ME 04915.

Issue Date: October 18 - 24, 2002