BDN’s ‘The Weekly’ Is Merging With ‘The Penobscot Times’

I moved back to Bangor a little over seven years ago. And just about like clockwork when we bought our first house up here, The Weekly showed up in our mailbox. Of all things, it was a flash down memory lane that I was not expecting. Not an Earth shattering revelation necessarily, but it kinda of made me chuckle.

I remember the small little extra newspaper showing up at my house way back in high school. In fact, my first ever original band had an article about us in it way back in 1992. We were called Backscatter. We played extremely snobby and pretentious art metal back in the day, and The Weekly gave us a little feature.

It was the first time I'd ever been interviewed for anything. Even my girlfriend's dad at the time seemed suitably impressed that I must be doing something right if I could get in the paper. Especially without it being for something he wouldn't have been impressed by, like stealing a car. I think he always thought I was secretly a criminal.

Fast forward to this week, and there was a small front page headline announcing that 'The Weekly" would be merging with another local paper, 'The Penobscot Times'. The new and improved version will be expanded to eight pages of local news, photos, death notices/obituaries, and will cover southern Penobscot County.

It will still be mailed free every week, and will cover Bangor, Brewer, Glenburn, Hampden, Hermon, Old Town, Orono, Indian Island, and Veazie. Also, current subscribers in those areas to the Pen Times who've paid for a subscription, will be refunded by the BDN.

So, a few weeks from now, we'll start seeing something a little different showing up in our mailbox. I'm all for it. In an increasingly digital age, it's nice to see some folks keeping a small printed paper in our hands. Lord knows there's a thousand reasons why it's not practical, but sometimes tradition is a little more important.