Monthly Archives: April 2014

Press release: Prepared for Senator William Hathaway, D-Maine

It’s kind of funny to go back and look at old newspaper stories and press releases, because so many of the issues from the mid-1970s have changed so little in the last 40 years. This release is about good U.S. jobs being shipped overseas. In this case it involves the shoe industry, but the components of this story are little different than the stories we now see about other U.S. jobs being exported to other countries. Those shoe jobs never came back…

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Bill Frederick
Press secretary
Office of Sen. William D. Hathaway, D-Maine
(202)xxx-xxxx

U.S. should deal firmly with shoes imported from overseas, Hathaway says

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Maine shoe industry will not be able to provide an adequate number of good-paying jobs until the U.S. recognizes that it must deal firmly with foreign shoe imports, according to Sen. William D. Hathaway, D-Maine.

The Maine shoe industry, once one of the largest and strongest industries in the state, has been weakened for years by the importation of shoes made in foreign countries. The shoes can be sold for less money because of the low wages paid in the exporting countries.

“We have finally taken some positive steps in limiting the imports since Jimmy Carter took over the White House,” Hathaway said. “We must not relax those efforts until the shoe industry is once again strong and vibrant.”

The Carter Administration has managed to limit foreign shoe imports through negotiated orderly market agreements.  The agreements with the exporting countries limit the number of shoes which can be brought into the U.S.

“These agreements have not been negotiated with all exporting countries, and they do not place the stringent limits that I would like to see,” Hathaway said. “However, they begin a process which should lead to the revitalization of one of our oldest and finest industries, and we must not let down until the industry is on the road to full health.”

Press release writing

This news release unveils and explains a new surgical device. Since it is a high-tech product, there is a danger of getting lost in the details. This release shows how a potentially complicated subject can be treated simply, and can be readable and interesting in spite of its technical nature.

CONTACT:
Bill Frederick
BILL FREDERICK COMMUNICATIONS INC.
727-599-7206
bill@billfrederickcommunications.com

The next revolution in surgery may come
from a small, under-the-radar company

 By ARTHUR FREDERICK

CLEARWATER, Fla. (June 7, 2012) — The next revolution in surgery may come from a small medical equipment company which, according to its own executives, has always preferred to fly a bit under the radar.

Bovie Medical Corp., a public company with executive offices in Melville, N.Y. but with labs and manufacturing facilities in Clearwater, Fla., has received permission from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to begin marketing this summer on a new, non-contact surgical device it calls J-Plasma. Those initial evaluations are expected to take place in several surgical centers around the country.

“We announced the J-Plasma concept several years ago, but the process of getting any new product to market has become increasingly difficult and time-consuming,” said Rob Saron, Bovie Medical’s president. “Because of that, the initial excitement may have waned a bit. But J-Plasma’s time has finally arrived.”

Bovie Medical is known most widely for its cauteries and other electrosurgical products, but it owns three patents for the J-Plasma technology, the first of which was granted in 1999. The latest patent was granted last November.

Three other patents related to the new technology are pending.

Continue reading →

Being part of the story: #2

Probably best to read the preceding post before you read this one.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

PORTLAND, Maine (UPI) – Everett C. Carlson helped blow up a National Guard truck in Boston and kept watch while others blew up a plane at Logan Airport and a courthouse in Newburyport, Mass., the governor’s star witness said yesterday.

Joseph A. Aceto, 23, of Portland, was the first witness in the trial of Carlson, 38, also of Portland, on charges of interstate transportation of explosives in connection with the bombings.

Aceto, who pleaded guilty Friday to three counts of interstate transportation of explosives, testified all morning and was scheduled to take the stand again today for cross-examination.

Aceto told the jury that he, Carlson, Richard Picciarello, 28, of Portland and Edward Gullion Jr., 28, of Boston’s Dorchester section, went to Massachusetts July 1 to bomb unspecified targets because of what they considered “oppressive acts of government against poor and black people.”

“The idea was to make demands… “ the slightly built witness said, speaking easily of the events.

At one point the group developed a list of eight to 10 possible targets, including a nuclear submarine at the Portsmouth naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and jet bombers at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire and actually visited a section of the base,  Aceto said.

“Me and Piccariello crossed the fence onto the airfield,” he said. “Carlson got out of the car but didn’t cross the fence.

Continue reading →

Being part of the story: #1

This story, and the next one I post, may be the strangest series of events that I ever encountered as a reporter. Someone planted a bomb in the offices of the Central Maine Power Co. in Augusta, Maine one day in 1976 — not exactly a common situation in rural Maine. The next day my office phone rang, and a voice said: “This is the Fred Hampton Unit of the People’s Forces.” The man, speaking quickly and allowing no opportunity for questions, claimed credit for the CMP bombing and hung up. I stood there with the dead phone in my hand for a minute or so, not knowing what to do. An operator finally came on the line and asked, “Are you through, sir?” I told her not to disconnect the line and that the FBI would be calling her directly. She gave me a number to call, and I called the FBI in Portland and told them what happened. The call was traced to a phone booth in South Portland. The bombers were part of a left-wing cell of radical former prison inmates who spent several months planning and carrying out a number of bombings in New England. When we think of terrorists, we tend to think of the events of 9/11 and thereafter. But terrorism has been with us for many, many years.

 

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

PORTLAND, Maine (UPI) – The composite picture which had been prepared by an FBI artist did the trick.

The new Central Maine Power Co. offices on Edison Drive in Augusta had been rocked by two blasts on May 11.

Injuries were avoided only because the workers were evacuated after a threat had been telephoned to the CMP switchboard just moments before the blast.

Letters left at the a Kennebec Journal and mailed to UPI indicated that the bombings had been carried out by the Fred Hampton Unit of the Peoples Forces, a self-styled revolutionary group which claimed that CMP was singled out because of its efforts to secure a rate increase from the Public Utilities Commission.

The day after the bombing, a person identifying himself as a member of the Fred Hampton Unit called UPI. The call was traced to a telephone booth outside a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in South Portland.

FBI agents from Augusta, Portland and Boston arrived at the CMP offices and began sifting through rubble and interviewing workers. The letters and pieces of the debris from the bombing were sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington.

The FBI agents began interviewing workers at the CMP offices. Some of the workers recalled seeing two young men walking around the new building several hours before the bombs went off.

Continue reading →

Aside

Covering the news media

Writing about the news media was one of my beats when I worked for a business newspaper in Tampa. It was fun and an interesting coverage area, but even in the mid-1990s the print business was in decline. That made for some uncomfortable stories, and also for some uncomfortable news business executives. They didn’t like it when reporters would write negative stories about them. I could always count on a ringing telephone the day after writing a story about a newspaper that was less than glowing. This story was about the Tampa TRIBUNE, a newspaper that has been in second place to the St. Petersburg TIMES (now the Tampa Bay TIMES) over on the other side of Tampa Bay. The Tribune is still hanging on, but its future is cloudy.

Arthur Frederick
Staff Writer

A team of Pennsylvania-based consultants has been hired to study the nooks and crannies of the Tampa Tribune, and is searching out ways to cut costs and boost efficiency.

Publisher Jack Butcher said the move was simply a matter of the newspaper business trying to catch up with other industries.

“The word that comes to mind is `archaic.’ Every other industry did this eight or 10 years ago,” Butcher said. “We are trying to make our company more productive and more customer-friendly — what just about any company in America has to do to survive.”

But to some Tribune news staffers, the study is little more than a cover for the further elimination of jobs which has been rumored at the paper for some time.

Tribune managers won’t discount the possibility of layoffs. But they say the study is really aimed at finding more efficient processes which will improve news reporting, and make the paper stronger and more competitive.

“This is an ongoing process that probably will take at least six or seven more months,” said Michael Kilgore, the Tribune’s promotion director and chief spokesman. “We aren’t looking at money to be saved or people to be employed. We’re looking at processes. We’ve told our employees that in some departments we might need fewer people, and in others we might need more.”

Continue reading →

Trade shows: Writing for industry gatherings

On several occasions I’ve been hired to attend and write about trade show gatherings. In this example, I was hired by the annual Fuel Cell Seminar & Exposition, which met at Disney World near Orlando, Fla. in 2011. In this case, the group was looking for someone to do interviews and attend sessions, and then turn out  stories for an industry newsletter. These assignments can be fun, and sometimes they are good revenue generators. This example is one of the newsletter stories.

Industry leaders optimistic about fuel cell industry’s future

In spite of the sluggish economy and reductions in financial support by the federal government, a number of fuel cell industry leaders we spoke to were surprisingly upbeat about the future.

During the 2011 Fuel Cell Seminar & Exposition at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., we asked a number of attendees one simple question: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the industry? Here is what they had to say:

MORRY MARKOWITZ, Executive Director, Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association: “I am very optimistic about the future. My background, both in the electric utility industry and the automotive industry,  has given me the foundation to understand the past, present and future of this industry, and I think the future is very bright.

“On the mobile side, the fuel cell vehicle is the only zero-emission vehicle that is on the horizon that will be able to exactly replicate the current driver’s needs in driving an automobile by having the range that it needs of 300-400 miles per tankful, being able to refuel in two-to-five minutes, and to be able to do that hopefully in multiple places.

“On the stationary side, the simplicity and reliability of fuel cell technology will provide a bridge for our current system of centralized generation of transmission lines having to go through vast areas and distribution lines that are increasingly vulnerable to weather  and even some future activities, both by nature and manmade.

“The idea of the simplicity and availability of fuel cells is an appropriate bridge for those technologies.”

SAM LOGAN, chief executive officer, LOGAN Energy Corp., Roswell, Ga.: “In the shorter term, the industry is going to be bucking the headwinds of the really difficult economy.  And coupled with that is the diminished ability of the government to provide the kinds of appropriated funds for product improvements, manufacturing improvement and deployments. Continue reading →