June 4, 2005 - Saturday

Bob Jones added a few anecdotes of advertiser pressures drawn from his own lengthy experience with Honolulu broadcasting:

That policy has been standard in the airline industry -- that newspapers, radio and TV are instructed to pull ads until notified otherwise when an advertising airline is involved in a fatal crash. It's been SOP at Hawaii newspapers, radio and TV for at least 35 years.

Examples I am personally familiar with regarding ad-stories relationships:

First Hawaiian Bank canceled its ads on KGMB because of a news story not flattering to former chairman Johnny Bellinger.

McDonald's canceled $25,000 worth of advertising at KGMB over a news story showing that it violated state law by not including the tax in certain ads and promotions (McDonald's was cited and fined as a result of the story.)

JCPenney's canceled its KGMB advertising over a news story on the police confiscation of alleged over-karated jewelry in its Ala Moana store.

Shortly after these setbacks, KGMB's then general manager said he did not want any more business stories appearing on KGMB News.

Now I'll have to ask Bob whether any of these incidents became "news" when they occurred?

On a very different topic, a Hawaii journalist writes:

Isn't this official report of Koran abuses hilarious when you consider the White House's condemnation of Newsweek?

NO we didn't flush it down the toilet. We WOULDN'T do that to the holy Koran.

All we did was step on it, piss on it, kick it, soak it with water balloons and scrawl a few innocent obscenities on it.

It's all good.

Recent news reports about tunnels in Waikele formerly used by the Navy for storage of bombs now being converted into commercial storage caught my attention. Back the mid-1970's, nuclear weapons stored in those same tunnels and then transported down to Pearl Harbor's West Loch became a target for peaceful protests. After a bit of scanning, here are a few photos of one protest. I'm looking for more.

Click on photo for more

Those Waikele tunnels have been out of the bomb business for years, a good thing for the residential areas that have grown up around them.

The Navy always said it would neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons, although everyone assumed they were around. So I was surprised to find current references to the 90 nuclear warheads and bombs stored at West Lock today, despite the vast growth in the surrounding residential population since that long ago protest. One online source, citing information from the private contractor that handles munitions, reports:

"West Loch is significant to the Lualualei facility (18 miles away) because it serves as its main ocean shipping/receiving dock. Operations at the piers, located on the south shore of West Loch, support the processing of weapons arriving in Hawaii and as well loading them onto warships. In addition, there are 118 above-ground storage structures capable of housing 20,830-tons of ammunition/explosives. A 1998 report listed 50 W-80-0 nuclear warheads (150-kiloton yield each) for Tomahawk Sea-Launched Cruise Missles and 40 B-61 nuclear aerial gravity bombs (170-kiloton yield) stored here."

Of course, this site also reports that Lualualei Valley is the largest munitions depot in the Pacific. That's the same Lualualei Valley where fire is a constant threat, where resort and residential development looms nearby, and where munitions now have to be trucked along some of Oahu's most dangerous roads to get where they are needed at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere. Our protests were just a few decades early, it seems.

June 3, 2005 - Friday

In response to yesterday's query about pressures from local advertisers, several people recalled an incident decades ago involving local grocery stores. One description by a former newspaper insider was particularly complete:

The classic case I know of was about 25 years ago. The state Ag Department was doing a weekly survey of the cost of a market basket of goods at different supermarket chains. An Advertiser reporter found out about it and the paper started publishing the results. Because some chains then had moved to 24 hour operations and others had not (and for other reasons, no doubt), some supermarkets always topped the price list and others were consistently at the bottom. I think the paper published articles explaining these differences.

A committee from the local grocers association visited George Chaplin and asked him to stop running the stories. Chaplin was unmoved. The information was true, collected at taxpayer expense and publishing it was a service to consumers, he said.

Foodland for a time ceased advertising in The Advertiser, which was a painful loss to the newspaper, of course, and rather cutting off one's nose to spite one's face for Foodland, since the joint operating agreement pricing meant they were paying more per thousand impressions by just advertising in the Bulletin and loosing contact with those (admittedly then the smaller number) who just read the morning paper.

Chaplin stood his ground. Eventually, Foodland returned. Eventually, The Advertiser stopped publishing the market basket prices. The numbers varied a bit from week to week but the basic story was the same. Certain chains were generally more expensive, although in any given week sales and promotions might make a given product less expensive at a different store. This is different than the case you cite, of course, since it was not about advance notice and the threat of pulling ads.

Maurice Sullivan acted on the principle (as I understand it) that he did not want to be advertising in a publication that made his stores look bad week after week. I don't think there is any obligation to keep advertising under such circumstances. I don't agree with his strategy, but he did what he believed what right, perhaps at some expense to his company. And Chaplin did what was the right thing for journalism -- and grocery shoppers.

I don't know whether the management of either paper would stand as firm today. Both papers get a lot of advertising from car dealers and while both papers write a lot about traffic, no one ever seems to make the connection between the glowing stories about record automobile sales and the fact that too many cars on our limited road resources (and the growing ratio of vehicles to population) are a key factor in our traffic woes. But, I digress.

A couple of others who worked at Honolulu dailies cited past policies of the airline industry.

In years past the airlines, in particular, had strict rules about their ads. They were pulled from the paper when there was a major air disaster, and if they appeared on a page with a crash story or opposite one some would refuse to pay.

A former Star-Bulletin editor confirmed the airline policy, but couldn't recall the specific years or airline involved.

Here's another batch of photos from an earlier period of peace activism. In 1972, the so-called "Hickam 3" faced federal charges after human blood was poured on top secret war files at Hickam Air Force Base in a protest against the Vietnam War. These photos are from a federal court appearance in July 1972. If you can fill in any of the missing names, please email me, ian@ilind.net.

Click on the photo for more

June 2, 2005 - Thursday

A former islander called attention to Morgan Stanley's recent demand that publishers give advance notice of negative articles about the company, with the threat that it would pull its advertising from any issue containing "objectionable" material.

According to Advertising Age:

Among the publications that have received that directive or have had other discussions concerning Morgan Stanley with its media agency, Publicis Groupe's Starcom USA, according to executives with first-hand knowledge of the situation, are Gannett's USA Today; Pearson's The Financial Times and The Economist; McGraw-Hill Cos.' Business Week; The New York Times and Time Inc.'s Fortune. Executives and their representatives declined to detail how such directives, and publications' individual "pull policies," were handled internally. A spokeswoman for Dow Jones & Co.'s Wall Street Journal said the paper was contacted about the policy.

My friend adds: "BP, the oil company, has also followed suit with a 'zero tolerance' policy. There has been amazing little outcry about this in media and news circles. I think these companies are taking advantage of print publications which are seeing readership declining, and have been hit by credibility issues (e.g., Newsweek)."

I don't know whether any company has tried this in a local market like Honolulu. Any examples floating around out there? Let me know.

Here are some interesting highlights from a new report, Trends in Newsrooms 2005, published by the World Association of Newspapers. The report itself is pricy, so you may have to be satisfied with this summary.

A couple of reactions came in to yesterday's little neighborhood video.

First, from Glenda:

You are one of those rare people who seem to like both cats and dogs. Most people I know like one or the other, but not both. I was a dog lover back in New York; I adopted a mutt. Now I have a cat and can't imagine owning a dog.

I'm one of those rare people who likes other people's dogs. Would I like a dog of my own? Don't tell the cats, but I've pondered that from time to time and the idea has some attraction, but (a) there's a whole new learning curve involved in behavior training and dog medical care, and (b) it's not getting a dog, but integrating a dog into a household of cats that's the problem.

Next, from Deborah in Punaluu:

I often wonder what goes through the (apparently tiny) minds of a few select dogs that witness the same person walk down the same street for years and then react as if the person is a total stranger or the boogie-man. I have two barkers 2 doors down from me... dobies (large, loud, and they scare the crap out of unsuspecting early morning beach walkers) and two pit bulls across the street (they are actually sweet dogs, just dumb as doorknobs). No one gets past any of them without a bark-fest whether they have lived in the neighborhood for 40 years or 40 minutes.

By the way, your neighbor's fence looks like it could be a little higher, at least for my comfort zone....

Well, that crazy dog in the video apparently doesn't bark at many other people, who are allowed to walk past without notice. And I couldn't agree more about the fence, although he doesn't seem inclined to leap out. The gate was open a couple of days and he just kept running back and forth barking.

June 1, 2005 - Wednesday

"Real estate hysteria takes over in Hawaii," a headline in the San Francisco Examiner says, while Commercial Property News reports an influx of mainland investors in industrial-commercial properties.

I can't really tell whether this Leuren Moret, subject of this long interview on the subject of depleted uranium, is a nut job or truly a woman on a mission. But she certainly paints a grim picture of the consequences of U.S. use of radioactive weapons. And it comes at the same time as more neutral reports of a UN training program to equip Iraqis with basic skills for studying the radiation effects of these uranium weapons. And this item reminds us that "depleted uranium" is a misnomer, meaning only that the uranium is no longer suitable for making nuclear bombs. It is still radioactive and still dangerous.

The files released yesterday in the "Peter Boy" case are a sad and strange mix, the record of ongoing attempts to reduce a terribly disfunctional family into terms suitable for bureaucratic processing. There's a temptation to see the personal failures of this couple and the loss of purpose of a lumbering social work bureaucracy. But these records also provide a window into the kinds of lives being led by people like these, indicators of a far larger set of problems than we want to admit among Hawaii's underclass, unemployed or underemployed, unskilled in personal relations as well as economic relations, without resources or support in marginal circumstances. Beyond this mysterious case, it is truly mind boggling.

Also of interest is the link to the state's Virtual Rules Center. If you're into rules, this makes it simple.

Now I have to make a personal disclosure: Not all of the dogs in Kaaawa line up happily for their morning dog biscuits, although my ongoing galleries of our morning dogs may have contributed to that appearance. Yesterday I documented one case in a mini-video. If you've got a cable or dsl connection, go ahead and click on this photo of Hiwahiwa Street to begin the movie.

May 31, 2005 - Tuesday

The World Association of Newspapers is meeting in Seoul, and you can track many of the issues on the WAN web site and--yes, really--on an editor's blog from the event. There are a lot of interesting media issues being discussed, as a quick look will demonstrate. Here's a summary from the BBC.

Spotted in the San Diego area, several businesses providing "a little taste of Hawaii".

From the San Francisco Chronicle, a good column on the clash of journalism and zealotry.

From the same general area, old friend Chuck Smith invites folks to read his Memorial Day essay on cheap patriotism. [My apologies for any problems you had with this link earlier today--it should work properly now.]

And now a change of pace. Instead of sand and sunrise, I'll share a bit of color that grabbed my eye on our walk back from the beach early yesterday morning.

May 30, 2005 - Monday

An article reviewing lodging industry investment trends for a hotel industry web site lists Honolulu among the top locations for hotel investors. Colorado-based HREC Investment Advisors concludes: "In general, the market areas with the greatest investment potential appear to be in major metropolitan areas on the east and west coast. Specific markets in which to buy assets now include New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orlando and Honolulu."

Is it fair to point out the investment recommendation isn't accompanied by any handwringing about "business climate" or oppressive regulation?

A story in the Seattle Times explains why Costco gets squeezed by rapid spikes in gasoline prices due to its rapid inventory turnover.

The Nashville City Paper reports on hometown problems facing Corrections Corporation of America, one of the major private prison operators so much in vogue with Hawaii lawmakers and the Lingle administration. CCA, of course, is also a big campaign contributor, giving $6,000 to Lingle's re-election effort in December 2004.

I was thumbing through the latest issue of Honolulu Magazine that arrived last week when I caught a glimpse of an item about talkstink.com, a site I visit from time to time. So I turned back to that page and was surprised to mini reviews by Michael Keany of what are described as "a few of Hawaii's best Internet presences," including this site. Even the cats got a favorable review! They'll be pleased. Reviewed alongside ilind.net and talkstink.com are Ryan Ozawa's Hawaii Stories and Hawaii Threads, Doug White's poinography.com , hawaiipodcasting.com, and flickr.com for finding photos.

The warm weather has been great for cat naps and has provided lots of opportunities for photos of yawning cats.

Hence this somewhat contageous collection.

May 29, 2005 - Sunday

And now the bad news, from attorney Jim Bickerton:

After reading your item about the $45,000 award to the woman whose cat was killed by a neighbor's dog in Seattle, I wanted to let Ilind.net readers know that could not happen in Hawaii. About 18 years ago, our Legislature abolished the right to sue for emotional distress when the only physical harm is "harm to property". (You can still recover for emotional distress if a close relative is killed or injured).

Pets and other animals are viewed by the law solely as "property" even though we in our hearts know they are much more than that. Thus, under Hawaii law, the only remedy when your pet is killed because of, say, the negligence of a driver or a careless Rottweiler owner letting his dog get loose, is the "market value" of the deceased pet (measured before he or she expired of course).

While you might get a bit more for your pedigreed pet with papers than you would get for your poi dog or tabby cat, it's still not very much. We can debate whether it's a good rule or a bad rule, but it's the law in Hawaii.

So who wants to sign up for the pet lobby to get this law changed in this age of pit bulls and irresponsible neighbors?

In yesterday's mail, this one from Ron Robertson: I visited my Brother, his wife and kids and my Dad in Kaaawa last week, and was hoping to see you on the beach in the morning, but it was cloudy and rainy just about every day I was there, so I didn't get out at sunrise much. I did get over to Lanikai one morning and got some pretty good sunrise shots.

Kaaawa Valley

Anyhow, I've enjoyed your site, and wanted to send you this picture taken by my brother, from his back lanai. Take care, and perhaps I'll run into you on my next visit.

This was the scene that I found around the corner here in Kaaawa a few days ago, an empty glass next to the hydrant. I can't tell whether to call this "optimism", "and not a drop to drink", or... In any case, happy Sunday.

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