Judy Meyer, executive editor of the Sun Journal, is shown in the newsroom in 2020. Meyer’s last day is Friday, following nearly 35 years with the paper. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal file

LEWISTON — Almost 35 years ago, the Sun Journal placed a little advertisement in its pages that said simply, “Wanted/ Freelance Writer/ Buckfield Area.”  

One of the people who noticed the opening in August 1990 was a stay-at-home mother of two interested in getting more involved in her community, where she’d recently been appointed to serve on Buckfield’s Conservation, Parks and Recreation Commission.   

Judith Meyer dialed the newspaper and found her calling. 

Meyer, who has been the executive editor of the Sun Journal for nearly a decade and one of the most respected news professionals in the state, is leaving the paper. 

Friday will be Meyer’s last day as an employee of the Sun Journal and the Maine Trust for Local News, which is the nonprofit-owned company that acquired the paper in mid-2023.

Meyer is the latest in a string of high-profile trust leaders to move on. In the past two months, the leader of the National Trust for Local News, which owns the Maine Trust, quit. So, too, did Lisa DeSisto, who headed the Maine Trust for its first year and a half, as well as the Sun Journal’s popular publisher, Jody Jalbert. 

Meyer has had one of the most remarkable careers in Maine journalism. She is the latest of many widely admired editors who guided the Lewiston Evening Journal and Lewiston Daily Sun from 1847 on — and the first of them who wasn’t a man. 

Meyer was named Maine’s Journalist of the Year in 2003. She received the Judith Vance Weld Brown Spirit of Journalism Award in 2018 from the New England Newspaper & Press Association and earned a spot in the Maine Press Association’s Hall of Fame in 2022, a rare distinction for a working journalist. 

Maine Gov. Janet Mills said in a statement that Meyer “hasn’t just delivered the news — she’s been a staunch defender of the First Amendment and the public’s right-to-know.”

“As attorney general, I saw firsthand her commitment to public accountability through her years of service on Maine’s Right to Know Advisory Committee,” Mills said. “A champion of government transparency and the free press, Judy’s hard work and inspirational leadership at the Sun Journal, and the State House, will be greatly missed.”

LEARNING THE ROPES

A city girl who grew up on New York’s sprawling Long Island, Meyer attended The George Washington University in the nation’s capital before getting married to her husband, Phil, and eventually moving to Maine when he got a job in the Pine Tree State. 

She focused on raising their two children for five years before that ad caught Meyer’s eye. 

Only a few days later, Meyer tackled her first story. 

It appeared at the top of the local page on Sept. 3, 1990, under the headline: “Buckfield fire department host to the annual muster” and included three photographs that Meyer snapped at the event. 

Meyer kept churning out stories that detailed the life and times of rural Oxford Hills towns. She proved a steady presence at town meetings and events, a solid reporter the public came to rely on. 

Frannie Babb of Sumner, who served on a regional school board, said that Meyer covered it for years “and always wrote accurate accounts of what went on.” 

“She was always professional and never had an agenda,” Babb said. “I just really like her.” 

Five years after taking a freelance job at the paper, the Sun Journal hired Meyer as a full-time reporter and its Oxford County bureau chief. 

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

About three years in, something happened to Meyer that sparked a passion for open records and open government that still burns. A few weeks after a 27-year-old papermill worker died on the job in 1998, Meyer phoned the state’s Office of State Medical Examiner to inquire about what caused his death and then wrote a brief story. 

Judy Meyer is shown in a December 2000 photo. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal file

After reading the story, the worker’s mother gave Meyer a call to ask how she’d gotten information that the mother couldn’t get.  

As the Sun Journal’s editorial page editor at the time, Meyer felt the need to weigh in on the mother’s situation. 

“The family should not have been the last to know,” Meyer wrote in an editorial. “Access to public information is not just for the media. It’s for everyone.” 

Meyer soon threw herself into the effort to protect and expand open government laws and practices in Maine and beyond. 

“I can’t think of anyone who has done more, more often, and more successfully to keep Maine government open and accessible to the public than Judy Meyer of the Sun Journal,” Sigmund Schutz, a lawyer and one of Maine’s foremost authorities on the state’s Freedom of Access Act, said in his endorsement of Meyer’s hall of fame induction.   

Her work on the issue led her to positions with the Right to Know Advisory Committee to the Legislature, the New England Newspaper & Press Association, the New England First Amendment Coalition and more. 

“Everything she does is based on her conviction that the public has a right to know what’s happening in their local government,” said Diane Norton, executive director of the Maine Press Association. 

In a 2013 column, Meyer called herself “a fervent proponent of public access not just because I am a journalist, but because I am committed to knowing how my government is conducting my business.”   

HEART OF THE NEWSROOM

Longtime Sun Journal photographer Russ Dillingham called Meyer “the heart and soul” of the newspaper where he’s worked for more than four decades. 

Andrew Rice, the Sun Journal reporter who has covered government in Lewiston and Auburn since 2017, said Meyer is “so well-respected because she leads by example. She’s willing to do all the same things that anyone in the newsroom is asked to do.” 

“No one I’ve ever met has worked harder and juggled more tasks than Judy,” said Christopher Williams, a longtime Sun Journal reporter who retired last month. “On any given day, she might be found fielding a phone call from an irate reader before reporting and writing a hard news story, then driving to Augusta to hold a Freedom of Information Committee meeting and testify at a legislative hearing before racing back to the newsroom for a daily budget meeting.” 

Jalbert, the former publisher, recalled a hot weekend last summer when three people died in Mechanic Falls at a time when no reporters were on duty. Meyer headed out to get the story.  

Meyer “not only recognizes a good and important news story, she understands how to go about reporting it,” Williams said. 

Judy Meyer holds up the Judith Vance Weld Brown Spirit of Journalism award she received in 2018. The award was presented by the New England Society of News Editors. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal file

Linda Conway, executive director of the New England Newspaper & Press Association, said Meyer “has truly been an amazing friend and an invaluable member” of its board of directors. 

“She’s always there with steady support, offering wise advice, and showing up for our industry — no matter what,” she said. 

Meyer is resourceful in everything, full of both resolve and curiosity, Jalbert said, noting that Meyer has also been the face of the Sun Journal to the public and to those who call looking for help. 

Meyer is “always fights for the underdog,” Jalbert said. “If there isn’t a level playing field, she’s going to make sure that they have the same opportunity” as everyone else to have their story told fairly and accurately “whatever the situation.” 

Jalbert said that for Meyer, “journalism is all about finding the truth. That is just her core belief.”