BANGOR – Every month, business people throughout town would pick up The Bangor Business Monthly and immediately turn to the “We hear that” column.

“Truthful rumors” filled at least two pages with anecdotes about which business may be doing what activity – expanding, closing, coming to town, hiring, firing … the usual things businesses do.

This month, however, the column won’t appear. And neither will the newspaper.

After five years, the publication has been suspended. John M. Christie, president of The Maine Business Monthly Group, this month has stopped the presses on five of the organization’s six newspapers.

The Bangor, Down East, Penobscot Bay, Midcoast and Androscoggin editions are gone, while the Kennebec publication will continue.

Bangor editor Fred Hirsch said Tuesday he loved writing the “We hear that” column and he liked to watch the business community’s reaction to it. Most of the time, he said, the “truthful rumors” were just that, truthful.

“I do miss the paper,” Hirsch said Tuesday.

Declining advertising sales and the rising cost of newsprint are being attributed as causes for the production stoppage, Christie said this week.

Usually ad sales are down in January through March, but December wasn’t good and April didn’t show much improvement, he said.

“Since the paper’s free, essentially the only revenue stream has been advertising,” he said.

Christie said he needs time to “think through” how to reconfigure the Rockland-based operations, especially in the production and advertising sales areas.

He said he has not ruled out the possibility of selling or of hooking up with one of the area’s larger publications to help alleviate production costs.

“The best bet, while we’re doing that, is to take a little breather with it,” he said.

The Business Monthly Group was formed in 1995 with the start of the Bangor edition. Ed Pickett, now owner of the Portland Business Journal, put together a publication that included news and advice for small-business owners by experts in fields such as computers and marketing.

Christie, upon leaving a position at Bangor Savings Bank, approached Pickett and got approval to start the Penobscot Bay Business Monthly.

The two later expanded their operations to include the coastal towns and the Kennebec area.

Pickett on Tuesday said he was saddened to hear of the stoppage of the newspapers.

“You hate to see a publication that obviously fills a niche and is well read … you hate to see any publication go,” Pickett said.

Combined circulation of the six publications reached 24,000, Christie said.

“We didn’t try to put it every place where free publications go,” he said. “We tried to put it where business people could see it.”

The loyal following of readers included subscribers who wanted copies of the paper even when they went to Florida for the winter.

“We ended up with only a few hundred of those people,” Christie said. “Subscriptions to a free newspaper … I look to every subscription as a bonus.”

The Maine Business Monthly Group received the U.S. Small Business Administration Journalist Advocate of the Year award for Maine in 2000.

The Kennebec Business Monthly, based in Augusta, will continue to be published. George Manlove has been named publisher, and is responsible for editorial and advertising sales.