This month marks publication of the last issue of Commercial Fisheries News, a regional newspaper based in Stonington, Maine, highly regarded throughout its 53-year run for its comprehensive and eloquent coverage of the fishing life in its home state and throughout the Northeast. It’s a sad passing, and it says as much about how we consume information as it does commercial fishing or the changing face of coastal Maine.

Although in many respects a so-called trade publication, CFN was at its heart a community newspaper, albeit for a community that came to stretch hundreds of miles, from Eastport, Maine, to the Mid-Atlantic. Originally called Maine Commercial Fisheries, the paper was renamed as its coverage — and influence — expanded.

“I always felt like we were part of the community we were covering,” says Brian Robbins, who over the past 40 years has written, sold ads, and most recently served as CFN’s editor.

Maine has proved to be fertile ground for fishing publications. As a boy, I scrounged old copies of Maine Coast Fisherman, first published in its own right in 1946. Billing itself “the mariner’s newspaper,” it was a celebration of coastal life Down East that, in addition to fisheries news, featured reports from lighthouse keepers, God’s Tugboat, and other columns.

In 1960, Maine Coast Fisherman acquired National Fisherman – not the other way around, I would note — and christened itself Maine Coast Fisherman combined with National Fisherman. Longtime NF editor David Getchell said giving breath to the seven-word title was “an awful struggle,” and eventually the paper settled on National Fisherman.

No doubt for the best. Two other fishing titles, Atlantic Fishing and Pacific Fisherman, had already been subsumed by National Fisherman. Things could have gotten out of hand.

I was a 19-year-old, mechanically disinclined engineer on the Vandal, a 92-foot eastern-rig that tied up in Portland, when the first issue of Maine Commercial Fisheries came out. I had been a devoted reader of National Fisherman, eagerly awaiting its arrival on the magazine rack at Tower’s Drug in Ogunquit every month. (Twice in July, when the 200-plus-page yearbook came out.) I had not so much as an inkling that a career in journalism lay ahead of me, to say nothing of the fact that I would one day be editor of National Fisherman, and before long, the new title was my default read. Who needed NF’s coverage of far-flung fisheries, Herreshoff yachts, and sea turtles? I could get by without God’s Tugboat.

Commercial Fisheries News and National Fisherman did not have the Maine coast to themselves forever. From 1998 to 2020, Fishermen’s Voice was very much a presence along the waterfront. Published by the Crowe brothers, Mike and Bill, it emulated Maine Coast Fisherman’s efforts to serve the eclectic interests of a Down East audience, and it garnered a devoted readership.

Opposite an article on cod, for example, you might find a piece about a long-forgotten gale of wind, or the impact of “mansion subsidies” on property taxpayers Down East. Lee S. Wilbur, who made his mark in boatbuilding, included a recipe with his monthly column.

Fishermen’s Voice was nothing if not scrappy. Bill Crowe was totally unfazed by a policy at NF-sponsored Fish Expo-WorkBoat Atlantic requiring publishers to rent exhibit space if they wanted to distribute their titles at our trade show. Rounding up illicit copies of Fishermen’s Voice as Bill ducked around corners with an armload was like playing Whac-A-Mole — albeit with a wink and a nod.

Nonetheless, the Voice was not a lightweight publication. Writers like Paul Molyneaux, now of National Fisherman, and Laurie Schreiber, among others, knew fishing and took their work seriously.

My absence from National Fisherman’s readership was brief. I’m not sure that could be said about all Maine fishermen. Aspiring to be a national voice for an industry that has been described, not altogether inaccurately, as balkanized, was a challenge for NF. Fisheries, traditions, and regulations vary from state to state if not port to port.

By the time I arrived on National Fisherman’s doorstep in 1997, as senior editor, the paper was taking a 30,000-foot approach to its coverage. The young editor in chief, Sam Smith, rightly saw that we could not out-report regional publications like CFN on the East Coast and Alaska Fisherman’s Journal, Pacific Fishing, and Fishermen’s News out West. Rather, he envisioned National Fisherman as a voice for the entire industry and an advocate for better management.

We did not neglect our geographic constituencies — the front of the magazine comprised an “Around the Coasts” section that offered regional news briefs, market reports, and “snapshots” of individual fishermen and of boats. The section’s mission was to set the stage for features that in aggregate would help U.S. fishermen see their industry in context.

And we preserved our most cherished — and longest running — column, “Cap’n Sane Says,” a fanciful chronicle of the escapades of Shorty Gage, Beulah Banning, and other characters in Saturday Cove, Maine. The column ran for nearly 50 years until the passing of its author, Mike Brown.

Mainers were in no danger of becoming uninformed as a result of National Fisherman’s evolving focus. CFN knew its audience and its industry and gave writers space to report the news. Boatbuilding, lobster landings, fish politics, and science: it was all there. Janice Plante’s coverage of the New England Fishery Management Council was so knowledgeable that I wouldn’t be surprised if there were times when council members turned to her to make sure they understood what they were voting on.

If I admired CFN for its news reporting, I cherished the cultural insights of its columnists and its celebration of the Maine lobster boat races. The paper never lost its sense of place and harkened me back to my own days as a 10-year-old stern “man,” later a deckhand, and finally a captain; to the era of eastern rigs, 18-cent shrimp, and trip limits on nickel whiting because the fleet — dozens of Portland-based wooden side trawlers — was catching more than the fish house could process. Aboard Lester Orcutt’s Minkette we’d get our 10,000 in a single tow. Curt Rice from the Ethel B. taught me to play cribbage on Union Wharf while we waited to take out.

The digital age was an adjustment for both NF and CFN. It’s fair to say it’s been a struggle. For one thing, revenue models changed as the publications pitched new online offerings to their traditional print advertisers. New media have seen audiences change, as well. CFN did its best to cope. “As the digital age took off, there were plenty of sources for management and political news,” Robbins says, from news aggregators to text messages. “Fishermen wanted to know how other fishermen were making it all work. We listened, and we made an effort to do just that.”

If you had any doubt about CFN’s preeminence in Maine, you just needed to visit the Maine Fisherman’s Forum, where CFN held prominent court in the exhibit hall. We would bring a few hundred promotional copies of National Fisherman to hand out, generally from a booth removed from the epicenter of things. These were taken, but with what I would call considerable equanimity. Or folks would say, “No thanks, you guys only cover Alaska.”

Back in our Portland office, I’d explain away our tepid reception. “A prophet is without honor in his own house,” I’d tell anyone who would listen.

I missed the point. Maine wasn’t National Fisherman’s house and hadn’t been for some time.

It was CFN’s.