Bangor business publication rejuvenated

BANGOR – Ed Pickett is back.

And so is his “We hear that” column full of local business anecdotes and other “truthful rumors.” Pickett, the former editor of the Bangor Business Monthly, premiered an almost identical publication on New Year’s Day.

The 62-year-old Bangor resident is back to working out of an office in the Phenix Inn in downtown Bangor after spending several years living and working in Portland. Pickett said Friday that Bangor-area business owners and former advertisers suggested he bring back the monthly publication.

“Finally, I said, ‘Let’s go do it.’ There’s a need for such a publication and no competition in the local area. It’s pretty much the same paper, we just started fresh with a new name,” Pickett said Friday. “The

concept’s exactly the same.”

The first 20-page issue of the Bangor Business Journal featured stories on the new University of Maine Museum of Art in Norumbega Hall; Pro Libris, a secondhand bookstore in Bangor; the latest retail sales numbers from the state; and an interview with the former president of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. Familiar columnists such as Frederic C. Hirsch, who writes about local media; Chuck Osgood, a KeyBank president; and Realtor Jon Dawson are back too.

Despite gloomy national economic forecasts, Pickett said that it seemed like a good time to restart a publication focusing on business in the Bangor region.

“Certainly there are problems with the economy, but ours locally is in pretty good shape,” said the veteran editor. “We’re a specialty publication. People who advertise with me are business-to-business advertisers. Somebody who reads my paper is interested in local business news, so we’re targeted at business readers, and ad rates are relatively inexpensive. We hope to grow but maintain a 50-50 ad-to-news ratio.”

The Bangor Business Journal will be distributed on or around the first of each month to 240 businesses in Greater Bangor including banks, restaurants, hotels and small, specialty businesses. Pickett said that the first press run of 5,000 copies even turned a small profit.

The Bangor Business Monthly, the predecessor of the new publication, first was published in 1995. It soon grew to include Down East, Penobscot Bay, Midcoast, Androscoggin and Kennebec editions.

John M. Christie, president of The Maine Business Monthly Group, cited declining advertising sales and the rising cost of newsprint as reasons for the paper’s demise in May 2001. At that time, Pickett owned the Portland Business Journal.

In August 2001, Pickett announced plans to launch the Portland Morning Sun, a free daily to be published Monday through Friday and available in Greater Portland. The first edition of 5,000 was distributed on Oct. 8, 2001, but lasted just 13 editions before suspending publication. Pickett said then that people he had expected to invest in the fledgling venture backed out because of the unstable economy.

Pickett owned WLKN, a Lincoln radio station, in the early 1980s, and was an on-air reporter for ESPN for the first six years of the cable sports network’s existence, covering skiing, including the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.

He also edited and published Ski Racing magazine for a time, and worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun for nearly 10 years.

For information on the new publication, call 433-7077.