Ben Bragdon

Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel

Ben Bragdon is deputy managing editor for local news, overseeing enterprise reporting projects for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. Ben was previously editorial page editor for those newspapers and Central Maine Sunday for more than 10 years. Before that, he was managing editor for weekly newspapers at Current Publishing in Westbrook. He began his career as a reporter at the Piscataquis Observer in Dover-Foxcroft and editor at the Moosehead Messenger in Greenville. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Boston University.

Latest

Published
October 11, 2019

Maria Panaritis: Smartphones are grenades in our kids’ pockets — and we’re not doing enough about it

Fireworks exploded first thing on a recent morning — and it was amazing: Twitter was crackling with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg blasting Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, and Warren doubled down on a pledge to break up the social media behemoth to protect us all from the monopolistic company’s darker side. The smackdown began with […]
Published
October 11, 2019

View from Away: US betrays Kurds

President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, opening the way for a possible incursion by Turkish forces, is everything his critics say it is: impulsive, unwise and a betrayal of the Syrian Kurds on whom the United States relied in the war against Islamic State. Characteristically, the president is now engaging […]
Published
October 10, 2019

Cass R. Sunstein: Trump’s defiance of the House inquiry is hard to defend

The White House’s fierce response to the impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives, calling the enterprise “an unconstitutional effort” and a violation of “constitutionally mandated due process,” seems to make one commitment: noncooperation. The key sentence in the eight-page letter, signed by White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone, is this: “Given that your inquiry […]
Published
October 9, 2019

View from Away: Internet’s future rests on California’s defense of net neutrality law

The future of the internet as we know it rests in California’s ability to defend what is widely regarded as the nation’s most robust net neutrality law. The stakes couldn’t be higher for consumers and small businesses seeking to preserve equal access to the internet: The outcome will determine whether users will have the ability […]
Published
October 9, 2019

Our View: Lead poisoning requires a solution as big as the problem

Lead paint and pipes are poisoning children at an astounding rate, costly billions of dollars in spending on health care, crime and special education.
Published
October 7, 2019

Our View: Child poverty needs more than a growing economy

One of the greatest periods of economic growth has not kept millions of American children from living lives on the brink.
Published
October 7, 2019

View from Away: Judge in Guyger case displayed professionalism and mercy

When the stakes for a community were as high as they were in ex-cop Amber Guyger’s murder trial for killing an innocent man, we’re rightly focused on making sure that judges fairly and professionally follow the points of law. But if we’re fortunate, we also have judges who understand that there are human beings involved […]
Published
October 7, 2019

A thank-you for Waterville mayor

Letter
Published
October 5, 2019

View from Away: Other states will benefit from California’s move to upend NCAA rules on paying student-athletes

The NCAA likes to say that all its student-athletes are “students first, athletes second.” And there’s a great deal of truth to that. Largely due to academic reforms enacted in 2003, graduation rates for NCAA athletes have risen from 74% in 2002 to an all-time high of 88% in 2018. But it’s also true that […]
Published
October 4, 2019

View from Away: Small airplane seats to finally get crucial FAA safety checks

Airplane passengers loathe being crammed together in coach and seethe when seatbacks are reclined onto their laps. But are these crowded conditions actually unsafe? Americans soon should find out. A 2018 funding bill gave the Federal Aviation Administration the authority to set minimum seat sizes as cabins shrink and body sizes grow. Federal regulations require […]

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