Displaced from their State House quarters, The AP's two-man Augusta staff and other Maine news organizations will spend at least 18 months working out of a trailer while their new home is prepared in a neighboring state office building.

In this issue Member update Fall meeting draws editors to Vt. Technical Update Return to report index

The old Media Center, itself a refurbished utility annex to the 167-year-old State House, has been demolished. But the relocation of the press corps is only a sidelight to the five-year, $50 million project. A latticework of scaffolding covers the capitol's south wing, and the interior is being stripped as part of an effort to upgrade the building while bringing it closer to its original appearance.

The building was completed in 1832, although there have been several modifications and additions over the years.

AP is sharing a double-wide trailer with staffers from the Portland Press Herald, Central Maine Newspapers, Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Bangor Daily News, Maine Public Broadcasting and a studio shared by Maine television stations.

In some ways the trailer provides more comfortable office spaces than did the old, environmentally quirky Media Center.

Correspondent Glenn Adams, who shares the office with Newsman Fran Quinn, said working out of the trailer into 2001 should not put a crimp into AP operations.

Although it sits in what amounts to a dusty construction site, the office remains within an arm's length of government offices.

The air conditioning stood up well to the heat of summer. It's hoped the heating system will be up to the rigors of a Maine winter.

Plans are for the new media center to be set up in the state office building, which is undergoing similar renovations. Some the state workers also are scattered in trailers ranged about the site.

The news organizations should be in the permanent office space by early 2001.

A.C. Hutchison retired this month as managing editor of The Times Argus in Barre, Vt., and turned the job over to Scott Fletcher, who had been the afternoon daily's city editor.

"Hutch" came to Barre in 1996 from editing stints at the Tampa Tribune and The Sun in Westerly, R.I. He was president and publisher of the Recorder in Greenfield, Mass., from 1976 to 1991.

Fletcher has been city editor for three years. He worked at the Times Argus' sister paper, the Rutland Herald, and the St. Albans Messenger before joining the Barre staff.

David Emmons is the publisher at the Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer and weekly Brattleboro Town Crier, succeeding Richard Macko, who resigned in April. Emmons previously was group manager of the Sanibel Newspaper Group in Florida.

Joe Karius is publisher of the Bennington (Vt.) Banner and weekly Manchester Journal. He comes to Bennington from the Brookings (S.D.) Register and previously was editor at the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal.

He fills the vacancy created by Jules Molenda's move to Upstate New York as publisher of dailies and weeklies in the Johnson Newspaper Corp.

George Neavoll, who invited the public to morning editorial board meetings, has retired as editorial page editor of the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram. Neavoll came to Portland from the Witchita (Kan.) Eagle and earlier worked as an editor and reporter in his native Oregon, Indiana and Idaho.

Jean H. Eichenbaum, chief financial officer of the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, has been named general manager with responsibility over non-news operations

Nearly 200 New England newspaper editors, writers, photographers and artists came to Burlington, Vt., for NEAPNEA's fall conference and awards banquets.

The meeting, which moves annually among the six states, ran Sept. 10-11 at the Raddison Hotel overlooking Lake Champlain and included the awards banquets for writing and photo/design on consecutive evenings as well as workshops and panel discussions.

A Saturday soup and sandwich buffet lunch was held aboard the Spirit of Ethan Allen II cruising on the lake.

The business sessions saw St. Michael's College students talking about their career and salary expectations in the news industry; former Maine editor Warren Watson, now of the American Press Institute in Reston, Va., exploring newsroom issues of the year 2000; Gannett's Bob Oliver warning of wage and hour pitfalls awaiting the unwary; and Alan English of The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., talking about the transition to full digital photography.

The host editor, Mickey Hirten of the Burlington Free Press, turned over the president's gavel to Margaret Walter of The Telegraph of Nashua, N.H., who'll be NEAPNEA president for the 2000 fall meeting at the Attitash resort in Bartlett, N.H.

By Jill Arabas

Graphics added to AP Photo Archive

Say you want to run a graphic of the Olympic bombing in Atlanta, but you don't want to start from scratch. You remember that AP did such a graphic, and you'd love to get your hands on it.

Well, starting this fall, you'll be able to retrieve archival AP graphics via the AP Photo Archive. AP will be offering hundreds of AP diagrams, maps, charts, and other informational illustrations.

Originally created as part of AP's daily report, these graphics will be available to Archive users for reference and publication, or for use in creating new graphics on related topics.

The entire AP graphics report for 1999 will be available in the Photo Archive, and selected graphics from earlier years will be added continuously.

Graphics will be indexed and stored in the Archive in the same general way as photos, so you can use the same search techniques as you would use to get a photo. The collection will include an international section, and some graphics will be available with Spanish language text.

Electronic AP Stylebook available

The AP is making the AP Stylebook and Libel Manual available to members in a searchable electronic format. The 1.2 megabyte file is an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). Members may purchase it for use on their reporters' and editors' computer terminals. Members simply need Acrobat Reader to use it.

For you techies who have never worked a newsdesk, the AP Stylebook is the editor's bible for word and language usage. It includes definitions, abbreviations and tons of information on how words and phrases are properly used in a news story.

The electronic Stylebook allows editors to type a word on a screen and immediately find the information they're looking for, rather than flipping through a book.

For rates and ordering information, please send an e-mail to ngoldstein@ap.org, or contact your AP bureau chief.

Digital camera offered

Here's a special offer for members who plan to buy a digital camera from AP.

Buy Kodak's DCS 520 or DCS 620 before Oc. 31 and you'll also receive:

• A one-year warranty extension (added to original one year for total of two years).
• Three removable batteries.
• Three 160 MB Lexar solid-state storage cards.

The DCS 520 is priced at $9,200 and the DCS 620 sells for $9,800. So, with the special offer outlined above, you'll save around $6,000 per camera.

Acrobat 4 on its way

The AdSEND folks are shipping Acrobat version 4 to all AP AdSEND subscribers and advertisers. Here's the scoop.

Acrobat 4.0 is a full version upgrade to Acrobat 3.02 and is available for both Macintosh Power PC / G3 and Windows environments. A UNIX version will be deployed by AdSEND when it becomes available. Meantime, UNIX sites should continue to operate on the 3.02 version.

Acrobat 4 offers new functionality and features for both newspapers and advertisers.

If you haven't seen your software yet, call your AP bureau. If you have questions about the upgrade, call the AdSEND Support Desk at 1-800-823-7363.

Jill Arabas, formerly of the AP staff in Montpelier, is a membership executive in AP's New York headquarters with a special focus on technology.