NEWPORT – As the fourth edition of central Maine’s brand-new weekly newspaper, Sebasticook Valley Weekly, was rolling off the press Thursday, editor Brenda Seekins of Hartland took a few minutes to breathe.

“This has been a whirlwind,” she confessed.

As a veteran journalist – she wrote for the Bangor Daily News for 30 years – Seekins is used to deadlines and breaking stories.

She said, however, that news coverage has changed since she wrote her first story in 1973. “News stories got shorter, more regionalized, statewide and less local,” she said.

Seekins’ plan for the Sebasticook Valley Weekly is to emphasize local coverage.

“As a weekly paper, we won’t have many opportunities to ‘break’ the news. What we will try to do is explain more of it when we can,” she said.

“We are not competing with anyone. We are simply a different news product,” she said.

The paper, a 10-page publication with color photographs, already is getting a great response in the area, she said.

Seekins sees the paper as “an opportunity to step back, to write the stories about clubs, churches and individuals that don’t make the cut for larger, and usually daily, news coverage.”

Owner Bob Pushard already owns the Katahdin Press, formerly the Katahdin Times, and his plans are to cover the geographical area from Burnham to Dexter.

The staff includes veteran reporter Michael Lange of St. Albans, who has worked for a number of area newspapers and will cover Pittsfield and SAD 53 and provide a weekly racing column. Mel Cray of Corinna is a rookie reporter who will write about Corinna, St. Albans, Hartland and Palmyra.

Joan Bradley of Detroit will cover Detroit, Plymouth and Burnham events. Seekins also has hired several local columnists and a student reporter at Nokomis Regional High School.

The paper hits the newsstands late Thursdays and costs 60 cents.