The Presumpscot River in downtown Westbrook in 2023. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald

A lot has happened in Westbrook over the last six decades: Downtown buildings were demolished in the 1970s as part of the federal urban renewal program. The S.D Warren Paper Mill was sold to Sappi in 1994. Market Basket opened in 2020 as the anchor tenant of the first phase of massive mixed-use development Rock Row.

And who could forget Wessie, the 10-foot-long snake spotted along the banks of the Presumpscot River, never to be seen again, or the floating ice disk that formed in the river and drew worldwide attention.

Through it all, residents have been able to read about what was going on in their city when a freshly printed issue of the American Journal hit news racks every week. That happened for the last time on March 27.

Of course, in recent years, fewer and fewer people have looked to the print edition of the paper for the latest news, which they can read online as it develops in real time. As the Maine Trust for Local News — which purchased that paper, the Press Herald and 20 others in 2023 — refocuses its resources on its digital products, it’s making a slew of changes to print production and distribution. For someone who got her start in journalism at the American Journal, the end of that paper’s print publication is the most personal.

The American Journal started as merger of the Westbrook American and the South Portland-Cape Elizabeth Journal in 1968, three years after former Press Herald editor Harry Foote bought both papers.

Foote became legendary for dogged coverage of those communities, digging deep into stories about local government and holding its leaders accountable. The American Journal wasn’t universally beloved, but it was respected and, more than anything, read with interest.

Foote sold the AJ in 2002 to Current Publishing, a group of weekly newspapers that had launched the year before and, in 2007, hired me.

My first job was covering Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth for the company’s flagship paper, the Current, but it was clear to me from the get-go that the primo beat was Westbrook — because of both the size of the city and the expectation established by Foote that the American Journal would cover it aggressively. So, when the job opened about a year after I started, I raised my hand.

The city was ripe with news — crime related to a growing drug problem, new industries brought in to diversify the former paper city’s tax base, and downtown revitalization efforts attempting to reverse the effects of failed urban renewal programs.

The former American Journal building on Dana Street in Westbrook. Robert Lowell/American Journal

More than 15 years later, the paper’s staff is still telling those stories and more, like the surge of residential development that’s happened in the city in the face of the area’s housing shortage. Among the latest projects is a 110-unit complex proposed downtown, on the site of the former American Journal building that has sat vacant, with its faded green sign, for more than two decades.

Even though the American Journal name will start to fade into memory, its influence lives on, including throughout the Maine Trust for Local News, where its former employees are among our reporting, editing, design and distribution teams.

None, however, is more important than Bob Lowell, who was hired as a full-time reporter by Foote in 2000 and will carry his legacy into a new era. Now, Bob’s focus will be on getting the news of Westbrook, Gorham and Buxton online and compiling it in a digital newsletter, Westbrook-Gorham Now.

When you think about how few Westbrook businesses are still around from the time the first issue of the American Journal was printed, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that, as our lifestyles and habits have changed, the mode of getting news to the community has had to adapt too.

And though you can no longer hold the American Journal in your hands or find it on newsstands, you still can rely on reading the latest stories from the same communities every Thursday — delivered instead to the inbox of your email.