Maine paper names new biz editor

The Bangor Daily News has hired Whit Richardson to serve as business editor, based in Portland.

Richardson most recently worked as managing editor for United Publications in Yarmouth and as a freelance multimedia journalist in Portland covering Maine business, New England travel, as well as culture and history for local and national media outlets. His clients have included National Geographic Traveler, Down East, and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

Prior to his work as a freelancer, Richardson spent four years as a staff writer and web editor at Mainebiz, a statewide business publication, and also was producer of the Mainebiz Sunday television program.

Richardson was a fellow at the International Center for Journalism in Washington, D.C. in 2009, where he received a grant to travel to Panama and Mexico to report on the use of Maine technology in the offshore aquaculture industry; and also a fellow at the Knight Digital Media Center at the University of California, Berkeley in 2008, where he studied the use of visual, audio and web-based reporting tools during a week-long workshop in digital journalism.

One of Richardson’s immediate goals is to strike a balance between the kinds of hard-hitting news content that the business community seeks, and the “consumer-friendly” reporting that the general public is interested in.

In an email to Talking Biz News, Richardson wrote, “I’m very excited to join a media outlet like the Bangor Daily News, which has taken an aggressive approach to covering the news, remaining relevant and finding a sustainable path, all of which has resulted in it becoming a multimedia powerhouse in the state of Maine.

“I look forward to coordinating its statewide business coverage and providing the business news and analysis that is important to not only Maine’s business owners, economic development folks and policy wonks, but also to the everyday Mainer who wants to understand how the larger business issues and economic trends touches his or her everyday life.”