Don Houghton, the publisher of the Bucksport Enterprise, has died. He was 83.
His death was first reported by the Ellsworth American on Wednesday.
Houghton worked 50 to 60 hours a week doggedly pursuing his all-encompassing passion — community journalism. He didn’t tweet and didn’t publish his news online, but he attended all Bucksport town government meetings, covered high school sports, collected police blotter items and enjoyed the most vital part of all the work: talking and listening to everybody.
Houghton’s publication was part of a vanishing breed, staying in print — and strictly in print — and independent despite increasing struggles with declining revenues.
Except for a 13-year stint at a nonprofit organization developing housing, Houghton worked in newspapers his entire career. He prided himself on the loyalty of his approximately 2,000 readers and believes that his Enterprise is not just any old weekly. In a 2019 interview with the Bangor Daily News, he called it “the voice of the community.”
Formerly an editor and reporter at the Providence Journal, Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky and the Daily Hampshire Gazette in western Massachusetts as well as a stringer for the Wall Street Journal, Houghton bought the Bucksport Enterprise in 2001.
He ran the operation with his longtime partner, Sandy Holmes, who handled advertising, circulation, bookkeeping and some editorial chores.
“Don was an amazing trove of knowledge, and his dedication to Bucksport was endless,” Holmes told the American. “We were no Bogie & Bacall — not Lois Lane & Clark Kent either — though he was my Superman. We will always be Sandy & Don of The Bucksport Enterprise. He did his best to put his heart and soul into every issue, and I did my best to help him to the end.”
BDN writer Christopher Burns and former BDN writer Nick Sambides Jr. contributed to this report.
