Addie Hinds of Bath, who enters ninth grade this fall at Morse High School, has received national attention for “Wicked Good News Bath Maine,” a webcast she started to promote positive people and happenings in her community. Courtesy Addie Hinds

BATH — In a pandemic-rattled time when much of the news being broadcast is bad, Addie Hinds was determined to find and spread some of the good.

The 14-year-old Bath girl, who starts ninth grade at Morse High School this fall, has been host and editor of “Wicked Good News Bath Maine,” a webcast hosted on Midcoast Community Alliance’s YouTube channel. She in April posted the first of six episodes, which has garnered more than 1,000 views, and Parade magazine recently featured her alongside other purveyors of positive news from each state. Among them was John Krasinski, an actor known for roles in “The Office” and “A Quiet Place,” whose own “Some Good News” YouTube show proved inspirational to Hinds.

Relegated to at-home learning and isolation from fellow students during the pandemic, Hinds said, “I found myself needing a positivity outlet.” She saw a webcast like Krasinksi’s as “a good positive source for our community.”

“I’m just a big extrovert and somebody that really relies on seeing all the amazing things happening in our community,” so “it was really challenging to not have that face-to-face conversation, to not have those ways to get involved while we’re in quarantine,” said Hinds, who is involved with the youth leadership program at the Bath Youth Meetinghouse and Skatepark.

Despite all the negativity in the world, seeing people coming together to support each other showed her that “there’s still a lot of light,” she explained.

Writing and filming the show on her own, Hinds aired interviews with community members that included her classmates, her middle school principal and other local role models. People who could offer ways to get involved, such as an organizer of Bath’s annual Kindness Day: “Examples of really strong positivity,” Hinds said.

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One news tidbit was Midcoast Community Alliance receiving a grant. Jamie Dorr, that organization’s founder, is among those bolstered by “Wicked Good News.”

“Addie continues to inspire and lead the way for all of us, to always be asking how she can help her friends, neighbors and community, and to do something that brings such joy during troubling times,” Dorr said.

The show is on hiatus, since “I thought it was a good place to stop, and it was becoming a lot for me to be doing it myself every week,” Hinds said. But once the pandemic has cleared, and she’s able to work closely with fellow students again who could lend a hand, “I think it would be a really good idea to bring it back,” she said.

Hinds foresees involving other youths who are interested in video editing and news anchoring.

For now, she can be proud of the statewide and national attention her work brought her, and the greater spotlight shined on Bath. Being profiled by Parade “was insane,” Hinds said. “At the start it was just something to help me, and then it helped so many people.”

Anne Krueger, Parade’s vice president and editor in chief, can attest to that. Among the people across the country the magazine interviewed was Roxane Cohen Silver, a professor of psychological science in California, who, Krueger said, “reminded us that ‘Anxiety is contagious, but so is compassion. We see our friends and neighbors reaching out to others, and we model that.'”

“She was right,” Krueger said. “We just had to look across America and we found amazing stories and amazing people, including Addie Hinds.”

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