Steve Collins

Columnist

Steve Collins became an opinion columnist for the Maine Trust for Local News in April of 2025. A journalist since 1987, Steve has worked for daily newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Maine and served as the State House reporter for the Sun Journal since 2016. The Maine Press Association named him Maine's Journalist of the Year in 2022. Among his other awards are the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2016 Ethics in Journalism Award, the I.F. Stone Whistle-Blower Award in 2015 and the Bob Wallack Community Journalism Award from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. Steve is a founder and board president of Youth Journalism International, a charity that teaches students around the globe about news writing, media literacy and issues of the day. His wife, Jackie Majerus, serves as its executive director. Born in Massachusetts, he grew up in a military family that took him to Norway, Ohio and Virginia, where he earned a degree in history from the University of Virginia. He and Jackie live in Auburn. They have two adult children, two collies and not enough time.

Maine, News

Legislators consider putting school security videos off-limits to public

by Steve Collins May 9, 2019May 9, 2019

Lawmakers try to figure out what footage of schoolchildren should be accessible to people outside the school.

Maine, News

Legislators may make preventive treatments for newborns mandatory

by Steve Collins May 9, 2019May 10, 2019

Health experts say rising numbers of parents refuse needed vitamin K shots that keep some babies from dangerous bleeding.

Business, Maine, News

As popularity of e-bikes soars, Maine asks if they’re motor vehicles

by Steve Collins May 8, 2019May 9, 2019

Battery-assisted bicycles fall into a regulatory gray zone that lawmakers aim to clarify in a bid to boost their use.

Maine, News, Politics

Sen. Collins may face first primary challenge since winning seat in 1996

by Steve Collins May 7, 2019November 5, 2019

Derek Lavasseur, a conservative activist from Fairfield, says he will challenge Collins in the June 2020 primary.

Maine, News, Politics

Former Democratic Lewiston mayor is considering challenging Sen. Collins in 2020

by Steve Collins May 6, 2019May 6, 2019

A lawyer, Jim Howaniec, 60, says his fiscal conservatism and social liberalism could give him a shot.

Maine, Schools and Education

Students fear Bates will become ‘playground for elites,’ but college defends its cost

by Steve Collins April 28, 2019April 29, 2019

Students call for administrators to cancel a planned 3.4% increase in the price tag for the next academic year.

Life & Culture, Maine

Revisiting Auburn’s high-seas mutiny hangings: Still a compelling story

by Steve Collins April 28, 2019April 29, 2019

One of Maine’s last executions took place in Auburn in 1858, when 2o men went to the gallows before a crowd of 7,000 for murder and mutiny aboard a Bath brig in the Caribbean.