After more than 30 years associated with the Bangor Publishing Co., during which he helped steer the organization through difficult times as well as through modernization and into new venues, John Bishop has retired as company vice president.

Bishop, 62, will continue to have ties with the publishing company, however, serving as a consultant for Northeast Publishing Co., a subsidiary that owns four weekly newspapers and prints many other publications in state and out.

Bishop’s duties are in addition to his plans of working on personal real estate ventures, getting to all the projects he set aside during the last three decades and spending time with his wife, Pat, and family, which now includes an 8-month-old granddaughter.

Bishop said he’s not ready to sit down.

“Retirement is just a time when the nature of the work changes,” he said Sunday between home improvement projects at his residence in Castine.

Bangor Daily News Publisher Richard J. Warren described Bishop as a great friend and colleague who brought much to the company. The two started at Bangor Publishing Co. in 1970.

“John has greatly strengthened the foundations of Northeast Publishing and the NEWS,” Warren said. “His oversight has successfully seen Northeast through the closing of Loring Air Force Base and the subsequent downturn of the northern Maine economy.”

With the decline in the economy, rather than cutting deeply into Northeast Publishing’s operations, Bishop sought to streamline how it did things and at the same time work to expand the business.

The company looked outside Aroostook County to diversify, purchased the Piscataquis Observer in Dover-Foxcroft and in 1991 founded The Weekly in Bangor. Its press and commercial printing extended its reach as well, including garnering lucrative printing jobs with the Portland-based Hannaford Bros. supermarket chain.

Another longtime colleague and friend, Roger Trembley, now director of operations for Northeast Publishing, said Bishop was instrumental in changes that allowed Northeast Publishing to succeed and be profitable.

Bishop was the driving force behind the computerization of the publishing company beginning in the early 1980s, Trembley said. Northeast Publishing owns The Star-Herald of Presque Isle, the Houlton Pioneer Times, the Aroostook Republican in Caribou and the Piscataquis Observer, as well as printing publications in northern Maine and Canada.

Under Bishop, the Bangor Daily News became the first newspaper in the country to have its press go completely to flexography, a new printing technology.

In the 1990s, Bishop was asked to head up efforts that would take Bangor Publishing Co. in new directions. Bishop was named president of Bangor Daily News Enterprises, a subsidiary that would offer Internet access, publish the popular Big Book phone directories and produce the travel guide “Insiders’ Guide to Maine’s Mid-Coast.”

Over the decades, Bishop provided advice and direction to the newspapers in the region.

“I have valued his advice and deeply appreciate his many contributions,” Warren said. “I shall especially miss his pointedly wry sense of humor.”