By Ted Cohen
A year-old southern Maine digital news outlet announced Sunday it's "about to put on our big boy pants."
Randy Seaver, who founded the Biddeford Gazette, said he's formalizing the business, as a limited liability corporation.
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"Within the next few weeks, we will establish ourselves as an LLC, open a business banking account and seek membership in the Maine Press Association," Seaver told his followers on social media.
"In short," he added "the Gazette will be transitioning from an idea into a legitimate, public enterprise."
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Seaver is a longtime veteran of the newspaper wars in Maine's southernmost county, where he has been a blogger, reporter and, at one time, editor of a door-drop weekly.
He started the Gazette after ending his association as a freelancer covering Biddeford City Hall for the Saco Bay News, an online news source with which he now competes.
In a column 18 months ago announcing his departure from Saco Bay's coverage of Biddeford, Seaver acknowledged a "conflict of interest" trying to report while simultaneously campaigning for the firing of the city manager.
Yet Seaver continues blurring the lines between reporting and very personal political sermonizing across his social-media accounts.
And he doesn't limit his proselytizing to local politics. He'll go off on an anti-Trump tangent one minute only to later claim regret for falling off the wagon.
"I routinely make this mistake," Seaver admitted in the same column announcing he was taking steps to formalize the Gazette as an established news outlet.
But no sooner did he swear off engaging in national politics than he closed the column with a picture of Trump next to Obama "just to get your attention."
It's a never-ending cycle of a self-admitted junky's dependency, going dry one minute only to pick up where he left off the next.
The otherwise-questionable approach seems to work as his brand. He's created a large following either because or in spite of it.
Though the Gazette prides itself on exclusive local coverage no one else touches, Seaver also posts items from - and with credit to - other outlets.
He calls the Gazette a "one-stop destination for news, community events and opinion."
