By HENRY FREDERICK / Headline SurferLAKE MARY, Fla. -- April 7 will mark the 15th anniversary of Headline Surfer, the award-winning 24/7 online news site covering the I-4 tourism corridor- Daytona-Sanford-Orlando - via HeadlineSurfer.com.
That is if my health allows It - and if I can truly give up the online news reporting. I am relishing that 15-year milestone with Headline Surfer on April 7, 2023.
All told, 2023 will mark 37 years as a professional journalist -- 22 years in print newspapers and 15 years in internet news reporting.
Two people have been with me from Day 1 with Headline Surfer: My wife, Sera (married since 2009), and Darlene Vann of Edgewater, who has contributed her "Musings" blog every 3-4 weeks - age & health issues catching up with her Ilate 70s).
So my goal is to continue with Headline Surfer to April 7, 2023, anniversary (15 years) and then ease up on the daily grind in the spring to gear up on getting the first of three books I've been working on to production by mid-June.
I've had a great run with Headline Surfer: Nine award-winning bylines in 2021 and 12 story nominations (results in October). All told, I have amassed 115 award-winning bylines in my journalism career dating back to the mid-1980s -- more than half of those awards in the past decade.
I need to start focusing more toward the end of this year on the writing for the first of three books:
• The first book is "Just What I needed" - on music - the songs I grew up with from the turbulent 60s to the alternative 90s and beyond. It should go to print by Sept. 15, 2023.
•The second book is "Wrestling ReWind" - yes, WWE, the theater of the absurd - Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin - and my dear friend, 7-footer Matt Morgan, now the mayor of Longwood. This book should go to print by Jan. 15, 2024.
• The 3rd book, "The Ultimate Scumbag," is planned to go to print on Jan. 15, 2025. It is centered around the biggest crimes, and high-profile trials in my career (execution of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, homicide trials of George Zimmerman & Casey Anthony,. Ultimately politics & crime - Central Florida's Joel Greenberg (disgraced Seminole County tax collector, Congressman Matt Gaetz, Roger Stone, and the connections to Donald Trump (Big Lie, Jan 6, etc).
Back to Headline Surfer to wrap this up: I've slowed down the daily reporting ground already since the start of the pandemic. I also lost the ad revenue aspect of the online news site and am not likely to recover that aspect of it.
The reality is I've only been out on a few live assignments with the bulk of Headline Surfer carried from the townhome that is home to my wife and I here in Lake Mary.
Yes, I graduated with high honors in 2019 from Full Sail University with a Master of Arts degree in New Media Journalism despite ongoing health issues stemming from an emergency life-saving surgery in 2016 at Orlando Regional Medical Center for heart damage caused by an aorta aneurysm.
And my then-brand new MacBook Pro laptop with my Full Sail graduate coursework has been a savior in allowing me to report news from home.
I'm waiting on the delivery of a new MacBook and hoping to pick up part-time work from home - to help with our daily living expenses - so everything doesn't continue to fall on my wife's shoulders while I've had to continue dealing with recurring health issues from the surgery.
Things looked bleak after my aneurysm-heart surgery in 2016, but I've been able to get through each day, week, month, and year since then.
Enough said.
Multimedia:
Headline Surfer Photo illustration / The past half dozen years have been very trying in keeping Headline Surfer going - with life-saving surgery in 2016, serious illness in 2016, full-time graduate school for a Master of Arts degree with high honors in New Media Journalism from Full Sail in 2019, and global coronavirus pandemic in 2020-21.
About the Byline Writer: Henry Frederick is a member of the working press and publisher of Headline Surfer, the award-winning 24/7 internet news outlet launched in 2008 along the I-4 tourism corridor in greater Daytona Beach to Orlando from Lake Mary, Florida via HeadlineSurfer.com. Frederick has amassed 115 award-winning bylines in print & online. He earned his Master of Arts in New Media Journalism from Full Sail University in 2019. He was a breaking news reporter (metro cops & courts beat) for the Daytona Beach News-Journal for nearly a decade. And Before that worked the same beat for The Journal-News/Gannett Suburban Newspapers in Rockland/Westchester counties, NY, dating back to 1989. Having witnessed the execution of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Florida's death chamber and covering other high-profile cases such as the George Zimmerman murder trial, Frederick has appeared on national crime shows on Discovery ID, Reelz, and the Oxygen Network series "Snapped" for his analysis. AWJ: