Penobscot Times sold to out-of-state firm

OLD TOWN – The Penobscot Times, a 114-year-old weekly newspaper serving the Old Town area, has been sold for an undisclosed amount. David Wollstadt, owner and publisher since 1974, recently sold the publication to Kirkland Newspapers Inc., a North-Carolina-based company with holdings in Maine.

Bill Kirkland is the company’s president. His wife, Ann Kirkland, is vice president. The company also owns the 140-year-old Franklin Journal, a twice-weekly newspaper in Farmington and the 120-year-oldLivermore Falls Advertiser, a weekly.

Bob Wallack, who heads Kirkland’s Maine operations, will serve as publisher of the Penobscot Times and newspapers in Farmington and Livermore Falls. Wallack has held editorial and executive positions with newspapers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine and has been in the business for more than 30 years. He is a former executive director of the New England Press Association and is on the board of directors of the NEPA and the Maine Press Association. He lives in the Franklin County town of Industry.

Wallack said the Penobscot Times attracted the Kirkland company “because it has been a long-standing community institution and one that David Wollstadt has served as a great steward.”

Wallack said that local-news emphasis will continue with a goal of increasing circulation. Other goals include “building on the solid work that Dave Wollstadt has done in coverage and-or ability to serve advertisers.”

Currently the paper has a circulation of about 3,800, mostly residents of Old Town, Orono, Bradley and Milford.

“We’re a parochial newspaper and proud of it,” said Wollstadt 11 days after he sold the paper on June 28.

Asked if the fact the weekly now is owned by people living out of state should be a concern, Wollstadt recalled that he bought the publication in 1974 from Barbara McKernan of Bangor, yet it was run as a local publication.

“They’re from Bangor and as far as the Times is concerned Bangor might as well be out of state,” Wollstadt said.

Expanding on the disconnected-from-Bangor theme, Wollstadt said, “My operating philosophy has been if the entire city of Bangor would sink into a hole, our [Penobscot Times] headline would be ‘Old Town Residents Missing After Out-of-Town Trip.'”

Wollstadt said he owned the Penobscot Times for 271/2 years.

“I think it was time for me to turn the paper over to an organization that could provide, in effect, full-time management of the Times,” Wollstadt said.

“For the past 20 years, my full-time occupation has been doing employee newsletters, primarily for paper mills,” Wollstadt said. Those mills included Georgia-Pacific of Old Town, International Paper’s Bucksport mill and Great Northern Paper Co.’s mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket.

The father of five girls aged 17 to 28, Wollstadt said he also has written newsletters for an area bank, an environmental facility and, for a time, the Greater Bangor Chamber of Commerce.

“I wound up, in effect, being an on-site absentee owner, which is not really the best way to ensure the success of the business,” Wollstadt said.

Wollstadt said a high point in his publishing career was supporting former reporter Bob Diebold’s work on the Norman “Bumper” Harrington case.

The case centered on an Old Town police officer disciplined by the city after false allegations of child sexual abuse.

The newspaper’s small staff includes a full-time news reporter-editor, an advertising sales person, a layout designer, a part-time sports editor and a person working in circulation and advertising billing.