RALEIGH - Granted face time with Supreme Court justices, first ladies and a U.S. senator, Betty Debnam Hunt has enjoyed the kind of access that inspires the respect, if not outright envy, of other journalists.

Debnam Hunt managed to build a certain cachet inside Washington not as a major player in the mainstream media but as the creator, reporter, editor, artist, saleswoman and guiding spirit of a four-page weekly newspaper that is delivered inside other papers.

What The Mini Page has lacked in traditional name value, it has gained over 37 years with its ability to reach a maximum audience, mostly children and educators, that has grown to include grandparents, parents, prisoners, really anyone learning to read.

It is syndicated in about 500 papers with a combined readership of about 13 million. It is used in school libraries. It is "one of the major phenomena in newspaper publishing over the last 35 years," says Dave Jones, the retired newspaper executive who helped Debnam Hunt launch it in Raleigh.

Finally, Debnam Hunt, 78, is stepping aside as the full-time editor and publisher. The official word came Tuesday, although she sold The Mini Page to Universal Press Syndicate, which has distributed the feature for 30 years, in May 2007.

"Don't use that word," she says. "Don't say I'm retired. Say I'm moving on to other things."

She wants to paint more. She wants to write children's books. She wants to visit schools to see firsthand what's being taught and how. She wants to spend more time working with the Debnam Hunt Literacy Resource Center at East Carolina University. She wants to spend more time with family and friends. She wants a dog.

But she cannot break free entirely. She will continue to write occasionally for The Mini Page and to offer suggestions. It's in her blood.

A journalistic family

Her grandparents ran the weekly Standard Laconic in Snow Hill. Her grandmother, Birdie Speight Debnam, put it out into her 80s, by which time her sight was failing and she used magic markers to better see what she had written in longhand. Debnam Hunt's father, W.E. Debnam, became popular in North Carolina for his radio program, "Debnam Views The News."

With a political science degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, though, Betty Debnam dreamed of being named an ambassador somewhere. She first tried other lines, such as writing advertising copy for a department store and doing public relations work, before settling into a career as a second-grade teacher in Raleigh.

The Mini Page evolved from an idea she had for a curriculum tool, called The Mini Unit, that was intended to make it simpler for teachers to quickly grasp different topics. The Raleigh schools weren't interested, so she began to think she could apply the same concept of digestible chunks of information for teachers and students to newspapers.

She pitched the idea of a tabloid-size paper for children to Jones, then the advertising director at The News & Observer, who liked it but told her she'd have to sell 12 ads before the paper would run it. Done. In keeping with the educational bent, she invented characters for the ads that would teach something about the products and services. For Jesse Jones Hot Dogs, Frankie and Frances Furter would do the selling. For North Hills Shopping Center, the task went to Paul and Polly Politely, who taught good manners.

She would invent other regulars as well -- Polly Ticks, Alpha Betty, Mini Spy and Mighty Funny, for example.

The first Mini Page, a back-to-school issue, appeared on a Sunday, Aug. 31, 1969. (The Mini Page now goes into Monday's N&O.) The first one included a "Who Am I" segment (Spiro Agnew, spelled backward), an "Animal of the Week" (the walking catfish) and a "Let's Take A Trip" (to Research Triangle Park) feature.

"I love what Dave Jones said about me, that I drew like a talented 4-year-old," she recalls.

Early on, she wanted to change what Jones described as the "very primitive, Grandma Moses-type" masthead she had drawn to something "slicker." Jones says he persuaded her to leave it alone, and it looks the same today: "I said, 'Part of the appeal of The Mini Page is the fact that it looks natural, like it was done by children.' "

The big time

Eventually, she took the idea to Charlotte and then to Norfolk, Va., ultimately hooking up with United Press and branching into books on various topics. A major breakthrough came, she says, when The Washington Post picked up The Mini Page in 1981. "A lot of our sources were in Washington, so the fact that we were in The Post helped, particularly locally," she says.

She also allowed sources to view proofs of her pieces before they are published -- a no-no for traditional newspaper reporters -- to make sure she got it factually right. "They like that. That's another reason we got good sources," she says. But The Mini Page never dropped a story because of any pressure from a source.

Universal Press gave her help. Longtime editor Alan McDermott recalls the Debnam "system."

"Every week I would get this big package full of her layout sheets, her copy sheets and any kind of illustrations or photos," he says. "It was a big jumble. It was like a big puzzle we assembled every week."

Even as the staff grew to include a managing editor and others, Debnam remained so central to the feature that imagining it without her is like imagining the Dave Matthews Band without Dave Matthews.

She had been weighing the decision to step aside for some time. Her husband, retired Marine Col. Richard Hunt, was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Hunt was a former N&O reporter, a military adviser to the late Vice President Hubert Humphrey and a lobbyist. He died in July at age 92.

"I just decided that this was a good time," says Debnam Hunt, who says she had nearly sold The Mini Page several times.

The constant deadline pressure had worn on her, bringing to mind a line by the late Charles Schulz, the creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip: "You always felt it was Sunday night, and you had a quiz on Monday morning."

Future editions

Protective of her creation, she is keenly interested in where it is headed. Managing editor Lisa Tarry says the long relationship between the syndication company and Debnam Hunt has allowed her to step aside with a sense of trust that The Mini Page will not be dramatically altered. Indeed, Tarry says, no major changes are planned except for an increased online presence, which Debnam Hunt endorses.

Debnam Hunt, who will split time between homes in Washington and Raleigh, says that while the art has gotten better, The Mini Page has preserved its educational approach. It's the newspaper approach that raises doubts about its future, given the industry's overall circulation losses. Asked whether she had detected any corresponding loss of relevance in the Internet age, she gives it a moment's thought.

"No," she says.

Tarry says The Mini Page has remained more stable than newspapers in general because many papers sell ads for it, more than making up for the cost. "It has sort of an extra value that some things don't," she says.

It remains relevant "because it's something that kids can easily read in newspapers, which don't have a whole lot that kids can easily read," says Lesley Richardson, media and Web librarian for Learn NC, a network of educators brought together by UNC-Chapel Hill.

Beyond the hard copy, Debnam Hunt can envision a Web site, a Mini Page television show, more books, ideally. At the same time, she is worried about the time that many children devote to hand-held games, "so I'll be interested to see what sort of future" awaits The Mini Page and the partnership of newspapers and educators.

There is much to learn, and Betty Debnam Hunt is wrapping her arms around it.