Why is Portland a hub for audio work? Audio feature

There's a substantial community of people who work in audio in Portland — whether they do podcasting, sound design, or audio engineering — but most folks don’t know about this. We wanted to figure out why this is. Why Portland, why audio, why now?

Emma, one of our founding editors, is a podcast producer, and so she sat down with two core members of the Portland podcasting community — Jess Miller and Brenna Farrel — in order to understand how Portland became an audio hub. They talked about why Portland has one of the most famous podcasting programs in America, a new podcast featuring Maine stories, and the best sounds in Maine.

Feature Story: Police test new AI tools designed to skirt transparency

A new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveals that Draft One, the AI transcription software piloted by Portland and several other local law enforcement agencies, is a transparency nightmare. According to EFF, the new tech, which was released in spring 2024, "seems deliberately designed to avoid audits that could provide any accountability to the public." 

Want to read more? Click here to read the full story.

Local News Quick Hits

Live Nation Moratorium: The long-delayed proposal for a moratorium on large concert venues that would effectively stall out plans for a massive Live Nation theater in Portland’s Arts District is again up for a vote on August 11th. Expect City Hall to be packed. The vote was postponed from the July council meeting due to a malfunctioning audio system at City Hall. 

The proposed Live Nation venue, which would be located right next to the city-owned Merrill Auditorium, has garnered massive opposition from locals in a campaign that has coalesced around the Maine Music Alliance, who cite the threat posed to local artists, businesses, and smaller venues. Here's hoping the mics work this time.

Fun Fact: Live Nation proposed another 3,300 capacity venue in Portland — the other Portland (Oregon) — where it also faced massive local opposition yet was passed anyway by city officials. Isn't it fun to think of Live Nation's lawyers being able to copy & paste materials for their venue without even changing the name of the city?    

The South Portland v. Portland feud continues: This spring, we reported that the City of South Portland hit the City of Portland and the Jetport with a violation over its clear-cut of trees on Dawson Street in South Portland. Although officials in SoPo later shared that Portland had "owned that error" in a quote to WGME — the City of Portland and the Jetport has since appealed the violation. 

The City of Portland finds a novel way to fund more tourism advertising: The City of Portland is set to renew an agreement with Visit Portland that creates a public-private mechanism for advertising to tourists. The City Council is considering the latest agreement for another "development district" in Portland with the Portland Tourism Municipal Development District.

This kind of district, similar to the Portland Downtown District, allows a nonprofit entity like Visit Portland or Portland Downtown to collect a "special assessment" of dues on designated properties. That money is collected by the city similar to property taxes and given to the nonprofit. The arrangement is a win-win for hotel owners: rather than ponying up their own money to fund tourism advertisements, this assessment fee can often be passed directly to hotel guests, backed by the authority of the city. 

The new agreement with Visit Portland is also expected to be on the August 11th City Council agenda, along with the Live Nation moratorium.

Downtown changes afoot: ambassadors and meal pilot

Portland Downtown, which we wrote about earlier in the summer, has launched its ambassadors program. Hailed as solution to mounting concerns over the visibility of unhoused residents in public spaces, these ambassadors are hired by Portland Downtown and are tasked with trash collection, “beautification projects,” and to connect unhoused residents with resources.

In addition to the visibility of the city’s widening wealth gap, business owners in Monument Square have also raised concerns about distributing food in the square. One business owner, Chris Aceto, wrote to the Press Herald about the problem, saying, “For some reason it’s been decided that Monument Square should be ground zero to feed the hungry and disenfranchised.”

City Hall and local agencies have acquiesced to the demand to move food distribution away from Monument Square and are launching a Meal Service Pilot Project on August 4th in partnership with Preble Street, Milestone Recovery, and Hope Squad Maine. The 30-day pilot will distribute food at 28 Cotton Street, next to the old Brian Boru building, every day from 12:30-2.

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Authors and Editors

Em Burnett, Emma Reynolds, and Nick Schroeder are founding editors for the Burn.

The audio piece was recorded and produced by Emma Reynolds and edited by Em Burnett and Nick Schroeder. It features the song “The Love of Right Now” by Cue Shop. You can listen to Essential Salt wherever you listen to your podcasts, or at mainepublic.org/storytelling.

Photo Credit: Annella Linton (WMPG)