BANGOR - Ed Pickett is back.
And so is his 'We hear that' column full of local businessanecdotes and other 'truthful rumors.' Pickett, the former editor ofthe Bangor Business Monthly, premiered an almost identicalpublication on New Year's Day.
The 62-year-old Bangor resident is back to working out of anoffice in the Phenix Inn in downtown Bangor after spending severalyears living and working in Portland. Pickett said Friday that Bangor-area business owners and former advertisers suggested he bring backthe monthly publication.
'Finally, I said, 'Let's go do it.' There's a need for such apublication and no competition in the local area. It's pretty muchthe same paper, we just started fresh with a new name,' Pickett saidFriday. 'The
concept's exactly the same.'
The first 20-page issue of the Bangor Business Journal featuredstories on the new University of Maine Museum of Art in NorumbegaHall; Pro Libris, a secondhand bookstore in Bangor; the latest retailsales numbers from the state; and an interview with the formerpresident of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. Familiar columnistssuch as Frederic C. Hirsch, who writes about local media; ChuckOsgood, a KeyBank president; and Realtor Jon Dawson are back too.
Despite gloomy national economic forecasts, Pickett said that itseemed like a good time to restart a publication focusing on businessin the Bangor region.
'Certainly there are problems with the economy, but ours locallyis in pretty good shape,' said the veteran editor. 'We're a specialtypublication. People who advertise with me are business-to-businessadvertisers. Somebody who reads my paper is interested in localbusiness news, so we're targeted at business readers, and ad ratesare 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 thefirst of each month to 240 businesses in Greater Bangor includingbanks, restaurants, hotels and small, specialty businesses. Pickettsaid that the first press run of 5,000 copies even turned a smallprofit.
The Bangor Business Monthly, the predecessor of the newpublication, first was published in 1995. It soon grew to includeDown East, Penobscot Bay, Midcoast, Androscoggin and Kennebeceditions.
John M. Christie, president of The Maine Business Monthly Group,cited declining advertising sales and the rising cost of newsprint asreasons for the paper's demise in May 2001. At that time, Pickettowned the Portland Business Journal.
In August 2001, Pickett announced plans to launch the PortlandMorning Sun, a free daily to be published Monday through Friday andavailable in Greater Portland. The first edition of 5,000 wasdistributed on Oct. 8, 2001, but lasted just 13 editions beforesuspending publication. Pickett said then that people he had expectedto invest in the fledgling venture backed out because of the unstableeconomy.
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 thecable sports network's existence, covering skiing, including the 1980and 1984 Olympics.
He also edited and published Ski Racing magazine for a time, andworked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun for nearly 10 years.
For information on the new publication, call 433-7077.
