Josh Shea reflects today's L-A with his magazine and film festival

PHOTo / Amber Waterman

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By Daniel Hartill

Editor's note: Five months after we recognized Josh Shea, he was charged with one count of possession of child pornography. Our sympathies lie with his family and the L-A community. Regrettably, at the reception honoring the 2013 Nexters, I spoke of how his success was helping to elevate the image of the community. This development does the opposite. You have my apologies. -- Carol Coultas

Joshua Shea kicked off his hometown publication — Lewiston Auburn Magazine — at the bottom of the Great Recession.

He and a buddy from middle school began selling ads on Black Friday in 2009 and launched the magazine four months later with three staffers and a plan to give away as many issues as possible.

Shea, then 34, had no formal business plan. Rather, he figured he could sell local readers and advertisers on glossy images and stories of a community that was too often depicted as depressed and hardscrabble.

“We're not Boston. We're not Portland. We're not Bangor. We're not New York,” Shea says. “But dammit, we're Lewiston-Auburn. And we can still have nice things.”

The notion worked. Combined with his other venture — a growing film festival — Shea has become representative of Lewiston-Auburn's enhanced image.

His three-year-old magazine, which began as a six-times-a-year special, now comes out once a month. It has increased its circulation from 4,500 copies to 6,000, and the average number of pages has risen from 65 to 80 while maintaining an ad-to-editorial ratio of between 48% and 52%. Just as important, his ad rates for full- and half-page ads have risen 50% while smaller ad rates have doubled.

By February 2014, he plans to move into an upscale project in Lewiston's downtown, in a neighborhood becoming known for fine French food, hard-to-come-by wines, craft beers and artisan bread. Property owner Jason Levesque is renovating the former McCrory's five-and-dime building for his company, Argo Marketing Group, and the magazine will get a prime, street level location.

Shea hopes to enhance his visibility with prospective advertisers and readers with the change, he says.

But visibility doesn't seem to be his problem. Shea is finishing up a term as an Auburn city councilor while getting ready for what could be his biggest creation, the fourth Lewiston Auburn Film Festival.

This past April — in only its third year — more than 1,500 people attended the three-and-a-half day festival, which included almost 80 movies and an awards gala. Attendees spent an estimated $375,000 in gas, food, shopping and lodging during the event.

“This has been an immense amount of hard work, but this has been little dreams coming true, week after week, month after month,” Shea says.

None of it seemed certain.

In 2002, the former reporter for the Lewiston Sun Journal and Stars and Stripes created a bi-weekly newspaper in Portland, called Metro. It folded after about a year.

“That was a very low time for me,” Shea says. “I could not sell an ad. I could not run a company. I ascended to the publisher of my own publication and I blew it.

He left journalism completely, getting a job at a call center where he learned the art of the sale.

“Taking phone call after phone call after phone call, I learned how to sell a product and an idea,” he says.

After about a year, he re-emerged as the publisher of a weekly newspaper, the Windham Independent. Two years and two rounds of layoffs later — the last owing to the 2008 collapse in the housing market — Shea began thinking of a magazine.

“If Portland and Bangor could both have glossy publications, which they did, why couldn't a population-wise similar place do that?” he asked.

He produced the first issue, which became his best sales tool.

“If you were having an event — if you were doing anything — we were there taking pictures and handing out free magazines,” says Shea.

The reaction was immediate.

“In Lewiston and Auburn, people had never seen their lives reflected in a positive way, with this level of quality,” Shea says. “Magazines were big city things. Magazines were national things. Lewiston-Auburn was not a place you did a magazine about.”

But it was. When the magazine polled its readers, the results flipped the stereotype of mill city residents. It discovered that greater than nine out of 10 were homeowners, more than half had college degrees. And more than one-third of household incomes exceeded $90,000.

They made up a bloc of people that weren't being served elsewhere, says Shea. They also comprised a potential audience for a film festival, the second of Shea's ventures. In 2010, the first year of the festival, about 800 people showed up, dwarfing pre-festival estimates of 300 to 400 people.

“For the first one, we raised about $4,000 from sponsorships. It became very clear this was not going to be just a magazine [sponsored] thing,” he says. “This was bigger.”

For the second year, the festival had singer/songwriter Don McLean and drew 1,200 attendees who spent about $250,000. In 2014, the festival is scheduled for April 4, 5 and 6. More celebrities and surprises are in the works, says Shea.

Just as he's expanding the film festival, he hopes to do the same with the magazine. He trusts his instinct rather than business plans to get him there.

“I don't understand business plans,” Shea says. “It's like planning where I'm going to go on vacation in five years. I don't know what's going to happen in five years.”

“But I'm the luckiest bastard around here,” he says. “I really, really am.”

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