December 29, 2025 — 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.