Twin City Times
The Twin City Times is a free weekly newspaper serving Lewiston and Auburn, the paired cities on the Androscoggin River in Androscoggin County, Maine. Published on Thursdays and printed in Auburn, the paper describes itself on its masthead as "Your Hometown Newspaper Since 1999," and it is distributed without charge to readers in both cities. Its name reflects the long-standing local identity of Lewiston and Auburn as Maine's Twin Cities, two municipalities that face each other across the river and share schools events, employers, cultural institutions and daily news. The Twin City Times concentrates on hyper-local coverage: city government, school and community events, local business news, arts and theatre, nonprofit activity and the announcements that organise everyday life in the two cities. It publishes in print each week, maintains the website twincitytimes.com, and offers a full digital replica edition online. In a market also served by a daily newspaper, the Sun Journal, the Twin City Times occupies the community-weekly niche, giving residents a free, locally focused paper built around the life of the twin cities rather than state or national news.
History and Identity Since 1999
The Twin City Times dates its history to 1999, the year carried in its masthead slogan, "Your Hometown Newspaper Since 1999." Its volume numbering confirms that origin: the issue of Thursday, May 7, 2026, was numbered Volume XXVII, Number 51, a sequence consistent with a weekly that began publishing at the end of the 1990s and has appeared continuously since. Across more than two and a half decades, the paper has kept the same basic formula of a free weekly for Lewiston and Auburn, supported by advertising and picked up by readers at locations around the two cities and read online. Reference descriptions of Lewiston have long noted the paper's place in the city's media: the Twin City Times is described in encyclopaedic listings of the city as a free weekly newspaper printed in Auburn and publicly available in Lewiston, featuring local news and short articles. That concise description captures the paper's enduring character — brief, accessible, community-level reporting, delivered free, week after week, to the twin cities it is named for.
The Twin Cities It Serves
Lewiston and Auburn sit opposite one another on the Androscoggin River in south-central Maine and together form the urban heart of Androscoggin County. Lewiston, on the eastern bank, is one of Maine's largest cities, home to Bates College and a large Franco-American heritage, while Auburn, on the western bank, is the county seat-side twin with its own downtown, the Auburn Public Library, Edward Little High School and the Community Little Theatre. Residents cross between the two cities constantly for work, school, shopping, sport and entertainment, so a newspaper that treats the pair as one community reflects how the area actually functions. The Twin City Times is published for that combined readership. Its mailing address is in Lewiston — P.O. Box 715, Lewiston, ME 04243 — while printing is in Auburn, a small detail that itself illustrates the paper's cross-river identity. Its coverage consistently datelines stories from both cities, and its calendar and announcements range across the wider Lewiston-Auburn area and neighbouring Androscoggin County towns.
Publication and Distribution
The Twin City Times is published weekly, with new issues dated Thursday. The print edition is free, a model that depends on local advertising rather than subscriptions, and the paper actively markets space to area businesses, including a business directory, inviting advertisers to contact it at Info@TwinCitytimes.com. Free distribution puts the paper in front of readers who may not subscribe to any newspaper, and it suits the paper's content mix of public announcements, event listings and community news that local organisations want spread as widely as possible. Each print issue is also reproduced as a digital page-flip edition, so the complete paper, including its advertisements and calendar pages, can be read online exactly as printed. The paper's website, twincitytimes.com, publishes individual stories in web form as well, allowing residents who miss the print edition to follow the same reporting. This combination of free print circulation, a replica e-edition and a story-based website gives the weekly three channels into the same local audience.
Local Government and Public Affairs
Government coverage is a staple of the Twin City Times. Its reporting includes the decisions and programmes of the Lewiston and Auburn city governments, such as city grant and loan programmes offered to help local businesses launch or expand, and public conversations hosted by the city on neighbourhood issues. The paper also carries state-level public affairs material with direct local effect. In March 2026, for example, it published the details of the Maine Department of Transportation's three-year work plan for Senate District 21, as announced by State Senator Peggy Rotundo of Lewiston, setting out the road, bridge, sidewalk and transit projects planned for the Lewiston area, including pedestrian safety work, bridge maintenance and a two-year extension of the pilot bus service connecting Lewiston-Auburn to Portland. Material of this kind is characteristic of the paper's approach: official announcements and releases are presented in full local detail, so that residents can see exactly what state and city decisions mean for their own streets, bridges and services.
Community Events and Nonprofit Life
Much of the Twin City Times is devoted to the civic and charitable life of the twin cities. Its pages announce and report events such as the Auburn Public Library's Community Block Party, the opening of the Lewiston Farmers' Market's summer season at 75 Lincoln Street and its revived winter market, held monthly on Thursdays at Edward Little High School in Auburn with vendors selling farm produce, baked goods, maple products, honey, cheese and crafts, and accepting SNAP and EBT payments with Maine Harvest Bucks bonuses. The paper covers local philanthropy, including the 100+ Women Who Care Androscoggin group's support for Meals on Wheels, and long-running community institutions such as Lydia's Lunch Bunch, a local storytelling tradition whose 500th episode the paper marked. Announcements from churches, historical societies, clubs and volunteer organisations fill its calendar pages, and community groups are invited to send submissions to the editor. In this respect the paper functions as the twin cities' shared noticeboard, recording the activities through which Lewiston and Auburn residents organise their collective life.
Arts and Culture Coverage
Arts coverage is another regular feature of the Twin City Times. The paper reports in detail on the L/A Community Little Theatre in Auburn, the volunteer, nonprofit company that has produced live theatre since 1940 and performs at 30 Academy Street. Its coverage of the theatre's 87th season announced productions including Cabaret, Sweeney Todd and The Sound of Music, with directors, dates and ticketing information for local audiences. The paper likewise covers author talks and library programmes around the area, concerts, exhibitions and school performances, and it reported the Maine Bicentennial Parade through Auburn and Lewiston, the twice-rescheduled celebration of Maine's 200th anniversary of statehood, which Governor Janet Mills led as grand marshal and which drew tens of thousands of expected spectators along a route from Auburn across the Androscoggin River into Lewiston. Staff photography accompanies such coverage, with parade photographs credited to Twin City Times staff. For a free weekly, this sustained attention to local arts and celebrations is a defining part of its editorial identity.
Schools, Sports and Everyday Life
Alongside government and events, the Twin City Times covers the ordinary institutions of the twin cities: public schools in Lewiston and Auburn, the YMCA and its Fit Fest and Triple Crown running series, church talks and lectures open to the public, farmers' markets, book sales and seasonal activities. Its stories are typically short, factual and service-oriented, telling readers what is happening, where, when and how to take part. Directory and reference summaries describe the same profile, noting that the weekly provides coverage of local government, community events and regional news for Lewiston and Auburn and is recognised for hyper-local journalism as a primary information source for residents and businesses in the Androscoggin County area. That is the paper's essential promise to its readers: not investigative or statewide journalism, but a dependable weekly record of the twin cities themselves, from a city grant programme to a library book sale.
Digital Presence and the E-Edition
The Twin City Times maintains an active digital operation alongside its free print edition. Its website, twincitytimes.com, publishes the paper's stories individually with dates and author credits, and serves as the archive readers search for local announcements. The full print paper is simultaneously issued as a page-flip digital edition, in which every page of the Thursday issue, including display advertising, classified-style listings and the community calendar, can be read on screen. The paper uses its digital channels to extend stories beyond print, directing readers to more material online, and it invites event submissions by email for both editions. This dual structure reflects the position of many American community weeklies, which keep a print edition that advertisers and older readers value while building a web presence that carries the same content to residents who no longer take a paper. For the Twin City Times, the digital replica also preserves each week's issue in a stable, publicly accessible form.
Place in the Lewiston-Auburn Media Landscape
Lewiston and Auburn are also served by the Sun Journal, a daily newspaper with a long history in the city, and by Portland-based television and radio for the wider region. Within that landscape, the Twin City Times is distinctive in three ways: it is weekly rather than daily, it is free rather than subscription-based, and it is devoted almost entirely to the two cities and their immediate surroundings. It is listed among Maine's weekly newspapers in state newspaper directories, under Auburn, alongside the state's other community weeklies. Since 1999 it has provided Lewiston and Auburn with hometown coverage under a name that states its mission plainly. More than twenty-five years after its founding, with its volume numbering in the high twenties and a Thursday edition still appearing in print and online each week, the Twin City Times remains the twin cities' own community newspaper of record for local events, municipal announcements and neighbourhood life in Androscoggin County.
