That deal put Brower's business in charge of three more dailies—the Press Herald, Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal, along with the Maine Sunday Telegram. In the three years since, Brower acquired the Lewiston Sun Journal and its chain of weeklies, the daily Journal Tribune in Biddeford and the weekly Ellsworth American and Mount Desert Islander.

PORTLAND (NEWS CENTER Maine) — Reade Brower says he never planned to become Maine’s largest newspaper owner. But, by being at what Brower calls “the wrong place at the wrong time,” he now owns 22 of the Maine Press Association’s 43 member papers, and six of Maine’s seven dailies.

“My game plan was never to own six of the seven dailies, that was never in the plan,” Brower says.

Has there been a moment of surprise it happened? “No,” he says, “because it happened gradually.”

Brower moved to Maine in 1979 as a 24-year old, following his future wife Martha who had a teaching job. Brower says he got jobs selling advertising and even selling items to convenience stores.

“Cheap sunglasses,” Brower said. “There’s a lot of money in sunglasses.”

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In 1985, Reade and Martha Brower started a small weekly newspaper in Rockland, called the Free Press. Reade sold all the ads, Martha worked with a few others to put the paper together. He says in those early days advertisers would pay up front, and those dollars would keep the business going until the next week or month.

“So I would pay every single bill I had whether I had the money in the bank or not,” Brower says.”In the envelope, I’d put a date when it was due so I would know how much time I had to raise the cash to cover it.”

Those lean times slowly improved and The Free Press became profitable. Brower got involved in other business ventures, primarily a marketing business that he says grew to have about 50 employees. That business was sold in 2005, and Brower looked or other opportunities.

“I was 48, and not ready to be retired.”

Brower says he started a printing co-op for small newspapers, and then in 2012 took the first step to creating the chain of papers he has today. Rockland’s other weekly, the Courier Gazette, and its parent company were in severe financial trouble. Brower bought the business which included the Courier, Camden Herald and Belfast Republican Journal along with the Village Soup online news service.

That business venture led to Brower buying a printing plant in Brunswick and, eventually, the daily Times Record newspaper. Then, in 2015, he and a business partner approached investment fund owner Donald Sussman, who had purchased the financially troubled Portland Press Herald and its other publications a few years earlier. Brower says he hoped to convince Sussman to shift all the printing of those papers to Brower’s business in Brunswick. Instead, he says Sussman suggested Brower buy all the papers. He did.

That deal put Brower’s business in charge of three more dailies—the Press Herald, Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal, along with the Maine Sunday Telegram. In the three years since, Brower acquired the Lewiston Sun Journal and its chain of weeklies, the daily Journal Tribune in Biddeford and the weekly Ellsworth American and Mount Desert Islander. In several of those cases, Brower says longtime family owners had no one to take over the businesses until he stepped in.

He now owns just over half of the newspapers that belong to the Maine Press Association, including six of the state’s seven daily papers. Reade Brower shrugs off suggestions he has created a sort of business empire. Instead, he says, it is a chance to find efficiencies and keep the papers in business.

“Because now that we have synergies of six dailies and 20-something weeklies, there are a lot of things you can do to save money instead of going straight to cut, cut, cut.”

Brower says he has been able to find and invest in changes that are saving significant amounts of money and should keep the newspapers sustainable. Some jobs have been lost, he says, but most have been retained.

Martha Brower has watched it all grow. She admits there have been a few surprises, but says her husband’s business savvy has taken them a long way.

“He’s not a greedy person,” she says. “He has never aspired to be a rich man. It just kind of happened.”

Brower is sensitive to criticism that he how has tremendous influence over the news and information for a large segment of Maine’s population.

“I look at it quite differently,” says Brower. “Anybody that knows me knows I don’t try to influence anything.”

“(Some) People in my own papers, I can’t stand reading their opinions cause they don’t jibe with what I personally think. But I love it… these papers, their job is to connect the community. That’s what newspapers do and what they’ve always done and what they continue to be good at.”

For Brower, the excitement and the mission appear to be about the business side—which he sometimes calls “the puzzle”.

“Martha used to call me puzzle boy,” Brower said from his main office, tucked into the attic of the Free Press building. Finding new and better ways for all of the businesses to work together, he says, is the job he loves.

“I don’t want to be an editor, I don’t want to control what goes in the paper. It’s too much work. I’d rather be juggling puzzle pieces.”

And does he expect the puzzle to get bigger?