Bob Hoig launched the Omaha-based Midlands Business Journal in 1975, pinning its survival on telling the growth stories of area businesses in a fair and interesting way.
His 20-year news career to that point had been mainly as a crime or so-called ‘investigative reporter” with larger organizations, such as United Press International, the New York Daily News, the Miami (Fla.) News, the Omaha World-Herald and the Lincoln Journal.
That experience helped lead to two conclusions guiding the mission of the Business Journal: (1) The Omaha, Lincoln and Council Bluffs area did not need yet another media outlet targeting corruption, vice, greed and failure. (2) Readers would welcome a fresh weekly business voice telling about area organizations, their leaders and the economic facts propelling their success.
Hoig has interviewed nationally-known figures such as business legends Peter Kiewit of Peter Kiewit Sons’ Company and V.J. Skutt of Mutual of Omaha; famed WWI flying ace Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, later chairman of Eastern Airlines; former Presidents Nixon, Johnson and Ford; and Sir Edmund Hillary, first man to conquer Mt. Everest. He has interviewed hundreds of Nebraska business men and women since founding the Business Journal.
Honors for Hoig have included the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Media Advocate Award for 1981 for the Kansas City District; the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award for 2004, and the Omaha Kiwanis Club “Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2006. His Midlands Business Journal was the Omaha Chamber’s Golden Spike Award honoree in 2002. He was the Omaha World-Herald’s Pulitzer Prize nominee in 1970 for a law-changing series on lax security procedures for sexual psychopaths at the then-Nebraska State Hospital in Lincoln.
MBJ Inc. of Nebraska, of which Hoig is chairman and president, added the Lincoln Business Journal in 1996. Separate projects for Greater Omaha and Greater Lincoln honoring 40 entrepreneurs, executives and business and professional men and women are approaching their seventh and fourth years respectively. The monthly Greater Omaha Business Magazine premiered in December, 2007. The company will produce its 11th Omaha Book of Lists in February, 2008.
Hoig, 75, said growth of his newspapers is pegged on the zest of MBJ’s staff for understanding opportunities presented by the region’s economic growth. It now numbers 18 full and part-time members.
The twice-monthly Lincoln Business Journal The monthly Omaha Business Journal Pages (within the Midlands Business Journal) The yearly Omaha Book of Lists
MBJ Publications Inc. • 1324 S. 119th St. • Omaha, NE 68144 • Phone: (402) 330-1760 • Fax: (402) 758-9315
