The Maine Trust for Local News is expanding its political team ahead of a historic and competitive election year.
The nonprofit, which owns most of Maine’s daily newspapers, has hired Kirby Wilson of Tampa Bay Times as an editor to oversee the Portland Press Herald’s political team.
Billy Kobin, most recently a politics reporter at the Bangor Daily News, will also join Press Herald reporters Randy Billings and Rachel Ohm in their coverage of Maine’s hotly contested U.S. Senate, U.S. House and governor’s races, as well as the impacts of statewide and federal policy changes.
Carolyn Fox, executive editor of the news organization, said the move comes as Maine’s congressional races garner significant national attention.
“But beyond who will fill the Senate seat, next year’s races will be hugely impactful for our state’s future,” she said. “It felt like the right moment to invest in more reporting and editing firepower to accompany our two veteran politics reporters.”
Wilson is the former senior politics reporter at Tampa Bay Times, where he had worked since 2017 covering local and state politics, including a stint at the Capitol bureau in Tallahassee.
He led the paper’s reporting through five major hurricanes, both in the field and from the newsroom, and was part of the reporting team that wrote “Deadly Dose,” an award-winning investigation into Florida’s kratom-related overdose deaths.
Fox, who worked with Wilson at Tampa Bay Times, praised his strong background in political journalism and “exceptional writing prowess.” He started Dec. 2.
Kobin, who starts Jan. 7, has been at the Bangor Daily News for two years, “consistently getting scoops, as well as interviews we all wanted,” Fox said.
He previously worked for The Courier Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was on the forefront of the coverage of the death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by police in 2020. He also contributed to the paper’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the hundreds of last-minute pardons issued by Gov. Matt Bevin.
“There is no other year in recent Maine political history that has been more consequential for our state,” said Julia Arenstam, managing editor of the Portland Press Herald. “By expanding our political reporting team, we are committed to providing more coverage that drives these conversations forward.”