Bangor Daily News announces changes

The Bangor Daily News is announcing the following personnel moves in the editorial department, effective today:

Michael J. Dowd has been named managing editor, replacing Julie Murchison Harris, who has been named editor-at-large. Rick Levasseur has been named night news editor. Tim Allen has been named assignment editor responsible for political coverage, business, health care, the environment, and education. Judy Long has been promoted to assistant copy desk chief.

Dowd, 47, is in his 26th year with the BDN, having worked for 14 years as an award-winning sports writer and columnist before serving as an assignment editor for the bureaus, city editor, and night news editor.

“It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to help lead this dedicated and talented group of professionals in these challenging times for print journalism,” said Dowd, who cited former BDN managing editors Harris and Nancy Remsen and Associate Managing Editor Kent Ward as role models. “My goal is to help make the Bangor Daily News the most accurate, relevant and responsive newspaper in Maine.”

Dowd is a member of the New England Society of Newspaper Editors and the Maine Committee on Media and the Courts.

A native of Bangor, Dowd graduated from Stearns High School in Millinocket and the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in English. He has attended the American Press Institute in Reston, Va., and is a graduate of the Bangor Regional Leadership Institute. He lives in Hermon with his wife, Ann.

Levasseur, 49, began his career at the BDN in 1979 as a part-time district correspondent. He has since worked as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer, assistant editor and assignment editor overseeing the political and special assignment desk. He has won several Maine Press Association writing awards.

A native of Fort Kent, Levasseur attended Colby College in Waterville, the Universite de Caen in France, and the University of Maine at Fort Kent. He has served on the board of the Maine Press Association, including as president in 1999-2000. He lives in Bangor with his wife, Theresa, and their two children.

Allen, 55, has held a variety of reporting and editing positions at Maine newspapers since the late 1970s, including the American Journal, a weekly newspaper in Westbrook, and the former Evening Express in Portland.

He held various posts at the Lewiston newspapers in the 1980s. He covered the court, political and State House beats as a reporter and served stints as editorial page editor, assignment editor of the Sunday paper, and managing editor of the daily paper.

For most of the 1990s, Allen worked at the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, first as a copy editor and later as editorial page editor and news editor. He joined the BDN in 1998, where he has been an assistant copy desk chief.

He is a former member of the board of directors of the Maine Press Association.

A native of South Portland, Allen holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Maine and a master’s degree in German from Middlebury College in Vermont.

He and his wife, Linda McRea, a copy editor at the BDN, live in Bangor.

Long, 30, is a graduate of Brewer High School and attended Colby College in Waterville as a Presidential Merit Scholar. She graduated from Colby with a bachelor’s degree in English and minor in economics.

Before joining the BDN as an intern in 1998, she worked for Champion International Paper Co.’s human resources department and as a swing manager at McDonald’s. Long also has served as a librarian’s assistant and a volunteer at the Orrington Public Library.

At the Bangor Daily News, Long worked as an intern on the news desk before moving to the copy desk in 1999. She became a full-time copy editor in January 2000. She has performed editing and pagination duties in all editorial sections of the paper and assisted the BDN systems editors in various duties.

She and her husband, Jay, live in Orrington.