Yesterday, Thursday morning, the office of the judge overseeing the ongoing Brandin Guerrero murder trial at the Washington County Superior Court reached out to us. They informed us that the Court Administrative Order for the press issued on February 29th, which initially granted permission for photography, was amended on Monday, March 11th, prohibiting photography in the courtroom. This was very late into our production windows for this week’s issue.  We were unaware of the court's modification to the order until this Thursday.

Upon discovering this situation with respect to the updated administrative order that prohibited photography, I, as the publisher, immediately pledged to the Court that we would not only remove any relevant photos from our website and social media but also would take the unprecedented action of reprinting the entire newspaper run of both Machias and Calais newspapers. We also committed to withdrawing the current editions from all newsstands and making every effort, humanly possible, to retrieve this edition from the postal system. I extend my gratitude to the postmasters of Calais and Machias for their invaluable assistance in this matter, which has helped us uphold the integrity of the Washington County Superior Court system. As of now, we have reprinted the newspapers in accordance with this and have already fully restocked the newsstands in Machias. The Calais Advertiser will be fully replenished by noon on Saturday. This was no small feat, but we were determined and have accomplished it.

Social media has been rife with misinformation and baseless speculation. The reason we had to reprint the editions is straightforward: an error occurred due to the preproduction of printing and distributing our newspapers, and the amendment happened during this time. As the publisher of both the MVNO for eight years and The Calais Advertiser for over fourteen, I recognized the necessary steps that had to be taken. This accomplishment was only possible with the dedication of my team. I am deeply grateful to everyone at the Machias Valley News Observer office, as well as the production and mail teams at our Calais Advertiser offices, who worked tirelessly to correct the issue swiftly. A special thanks to our newsstand distribution team, Steven Ferrar and Lisa Sanderson, who went above and beyond to complete the replacement in an exceptionally timely manner. I want to thank all my team for your dedication to our newspapers.

Lastly, thank you, the readers, for your understanding, and please forgive us for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Sincerely yours,

Pierre Little

Publisher