The Costello Family has been devoted to producing award-winning newspapers for you, our readers, for more than a century. We have welcomed your news and your opinions on our pages. We have reported on your accomplishments, gathered information to help you decide how to vote, challenged public officials on your behalf and featured you and your children on playing fields and in classrooms.

We have reported the news of the day, large and small, some of it heartbreaking and much to be celebrated. Our focus has been covering your neighborhoods, and we have worked very hard to ensure our newspapers serve as a connection and a resource for your communities. In order to ensure that essential connection continues, we have decided to sell our company to an organization with broader resources and reach.

Sun Media Group, which publishes the Sun Journal, the Forecasters and Current Publications, American Journal, Lakes Region Weekly, Advertiser Democrat in Norway, Rumford Falls Times, The Bethel Citizen, The Franklin Journal, Livermore Falls Advertiser, The Rangeley Highlander, The Penobscot Times, Maine Women Magazine, 95 North and My Gen magazines is being sold to a Maine-based, independently-owned company controlled by Reade Brower, a mid-coast media executive and entrepreneur.

For four generations, the Costello family has been proud stewards of the local community publications that have recorded the events that have defined your lives, your parents’ lives, your grandparents’ lives and your great-grandparents’ lives. We have been proud to carry on the tradition from our father, James R. Costello Sr., our grandfather, Russell H. Costello and our great-grandfather, Louis B. Costello, of managing and operating a family–owned publishing company.

Though much has changed throughout the generations, our commitment to excellence has remained constant. We have been an essential part of the community, pledging ourselves to local news and quality community journalism from the very beginning and never backing away from that commitment.

We have also been a primary platform for local advertisers to reach customers, and have sponsored and supported countless community events and organizations working to build engaged communities.

We have been extremely fortunate to work with so many talented and dedicated individuals over the years. Together they have produced publications that have garnered statewide, regional and national accolades.

We have had the great privilege of serving you, our readers and our advertisers, through the years and thank you for your support. And, we are confident the new owner will continue with strong traditions and values that will maintain the vital role of community journalism for you.

The Costello Family