Maine is a dead state, has been for many years.
As far as the reporter goes —I don’t know why his firing would be a surprise.
* Newspaper reporters are a dying trade (yes, trade, it is not a profession, though they’ve been told it is). It is a skill that most people who had an education in secondary schools before 1970 can attain with training. No four expensive years of balderdash. It is a trade that has been destroyed by academia. Anybody believing journalism is a professional career has been snookered. Feel bad for your parents if they payed bucks to put you through the snookering.
* If the paper is privately owned or a owned by a private conglomerate, they have the privilege to hire and fire anybody they choose. So far the free-market system allows that — so far.
*(1) Don’t e-mail private opinions/concerns from work. (2) You work with imbeciles.
My comment is based on more than 25 years in the newspaper industry.
I would also add the provision that, back in the old days at least, reporters weren’t supposed to have an “opinion.” I also have 20+ years experience in the media, and can remember a time when I put a “Jesse Jackson for president” poster above my desk as a joke and was told to take it down because I wasn’t supposed to show partisanship. Today I probably would have been fired for that offense, for a very different reason. I can tell you that it’s very difficult to work in a news environment with a conservative outlook. I am fairly outspoken and was let go in my last two jobs in news. I sued and collected in one and wish I could do the same in the second. I hope this guy sues, too. It worth a shot, as I found out.