Background
Maine Trust for Local News, owned by the non-profit National Trust for Local News, is the publisher behind Portland Press Herald and a number of other regional titles across Maine. With a growing portfolio of publications and an increasingly digital readership, they needed a mobile app that could bring its titles together in one place and deliver a personalised, engaging experience that keeps readers coming back every day.
The Challenge
METLN came to PageSuite with a clear brief: build a single app that could serve readers across multiple regions, deliver both breaking news and curated editions, drive daily engagement, support community interaction, and protect premium content behind a paywall. The app needed to feel like a premium consumer product that reflected the quality of its journalism, and one that would build lasting reader habits.
The Solution
PageSuite designed and built a brand new kiosk app for METLN from the ground up. The app brings multiple publications and content streams together in a single, unified experience. Upon launching the app, readers can choose their preferred ‘coverage area’, they are then presented with the relevant editions and articles from across those specified locations.
Personalisation is central to the experience, readers select their reading preferences, so the app automatically surfaces content in their preferred format the moment they open it. To deepen daily engagement, the app includes interactive puzzles powered by Arkadium – giving readers a reason to return every day beyond the news itself. Pre-roll advertising is served ahead of puzzles, creating a natural inventory for ad revenue without disrupting the reading experience.
Community engagement is supported through Viafoura’s commenting platform, letting readers discuss stories and follow conversations directly within the app. Subscription and paywall management is handled by Flip Pay, giving Maine Trust a flexible, conversion-focused payment solution that supports metered access and full subscription flows.
OneSignal powers push notifications and in-app messaging, enabling METLN to reach readers with breaking news alerts, personalised content nudges, and in-app messaging – keeping the app front of mind throughout the day. Importantly, readers can opt into push notifications by topic and location.
The result is a full-featured app available on iOS and Android that gives subscribers live news, editions, puzzles, and community – with a seamless sign-up, payment, and personalisation experience built in.
Client Quote
“Press Herald+ has been a huge improvement for our app users and we’ve heard positive feedback and seen growth in that audience,” said Karen Beaudoin, METLN’s VP Digital Product Development. “The kiosk app allows us to showcase our wide variety of statewide and hyper-local coverage from across southern, central and western Maine, while letting readers choose what they want to read and how they want to read it.”
Summary
The Press Herald+ app demonstrates what PageSuite delivers for regional publishers looking to unify and grow their digital offering. By combining multi-publication delivery, personalised content, live news, Arkadium puzzles, Viafoura commenting, Flip Pay’s paywall, and OneSignal messaging in a single app, METLN now has a scalable platform built for the future of local journalism.