Doug Harlow, a reporter for the Waterville-based Morning Sentinel newspaper for the past 31 years, died Thursday of cancer.
Harlow, based in Skowhegan, was known primarily for his work covering news and events in Somerset County. Described by his editor as “an avid newsman through and through,” Harlow had persisted through periods of poor health, and since 2005 has used an electronic larynx to speak after his cancerous vocal cords were removed.
“Doug has remained a journalist to the very end, even while he has been out on medical leave, passing along tips and story ideas right up until recently,” Scott Monore, managing editor for the Sentinel and its sister paper, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, said this week in an email sent out about Harlow’s passing. “At the upcoming Maine Press Association awards banquet, Doug receives a second place award for best courts story for his enterprising reporting following the conviction of Luc Tieman.”
According to a story published Friday by the Sentinel, Harlow had been out on medical leave for the past three months while being treated for symptoms of pneumonia. While out on leave, he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“Covering the sprawling Somerset County, Harlow was remembered by colleagues as an avid community journalist whose bread-and-butter were local stories on crime, businesses, municipal government and the arts,” the Sentinel reported. “Survivors include his wife Mary Lou, and his adult children: son John, and daughter Georgia. A celebration of life is planned at a later date.”
Harlow attended the University of New Haven in West Haven, Connecticut, and then traveled extensively outside the country before settling down, according to the article. He was a Stone Soup Society poet and cab driver in Boston in the 1970s and was hired as a contracted correspondent for the Sentinel in January 1988, the newspaper reported.
Judy Harrison, Bangor Daily News’ senior criminal justice reporter, said that she felt a kinship with Harlow because, in many ways, they were cut from the same cloth.
“We are both old cranky journalists and share a philosophy about journalism that was formed long before Tweets or Wi-Fi or Instagram,” Harrison said. “He knew more about Somerset County than any other reporter in the state, and I learned a lot about court coverage reading his stories. He knew which details to give his audience.
“They don’t make them like Doug anymore,” she added, “Dogged, intrepid, irascible and rude when that’s the only way to get the story.”
Erin Rhoda, Maine Focus editor for Bangor Daily News, worked with Harlow for more than two years at the Sentinel before moving to the BDN in 2012. She posted a remembrance of Harlow on her Facebook page after hearing he had passed away.
“Thank you for buying me a hot dog and taking me to sit and watch the trains — your way of convincing me to work with you in Skowhegan,” Rhoda wrote. “Thank you for putting up with me for 2 ½ years, just the two of us working as reporters in an old shed converted into an office by the rushing river … thank you for making me laugh when mostly what I saw every day was some form of tragedy. No life is easy. We can only be so lucky to have friends like you along for the story.”
Amy Calder, a longtime reporter for the Sentinel, replied to Rhoda’s post, echoing her praise of their departed colleague.
“It’s hard, after having worked with him for 31 years,” Calder said. “We started the same year, two months apart in 1988. We had our ups and downs and fierce debates but always considered each other brother and sister. There’ll never be another Doug and we miss him.”
