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We’re getting that hard early morning rain in Kaaawa right now that recurs daily during most parts of the year. Typically it will pass in a few minutes and not define the day, but not always.

The Honolulu Advertiser’s obsessive Hawaii headline hawker is back at work. Among today’s offerings:

“Hawaii underground power lines costly” (a story on undergrounding utility lines on Oahu’s Waianae coast. Yesterday it was “Hawaii plan calls for burying utility lines”).

“Polluted Hawaii site bought for cleanup” (about property in Iwilei near downtown Honolulu).

“No rent break for Mighty Mo’ in Hawaii” (well, it’s in Pearl Harbor on Oahu).

These are mixed freely with other headers where Hawaii refers to the County of Hawaii or, alternately, the State of Hawaii. Nothing new, just chronic.

Here we go again. The Seattle Times is facing substantial job cuts, including some layoffs.

According to the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The first round of layoffs will be in February and the second round will be in July, Guild administrative officer Liz Brown said. Seattle Times Labor Relations Vice President Chris Biencourt warned her Tuesday morning about the announcement, she said.

“The Times believes they can make the reduction they need to make primarily through attrition,” Brown said. “At this point they are not going to slash their news staff, which is what a lot of newspapers are doing now, and in that regard, the news could have been much worse.”

One district adviser will be cut, as well as seven assistant district advisers, two home-delivery managers, one clerk and three zone clerks, Brown said she was told. Eighteen field assistants, whose main job is to deliver missed papers, will be limited to 19 hours per week, one hour short of the minimum to receive medical insurance.

And in Chicago, the Sun-Times is cutting 19 percent of its newsroom and going to a smaller paper size to save on newsprint.

“Everybody is frantic,” said one newsroom veteran who asked not to be identified. “Everybody is worried not just about the people who would be cut, but what the place will look like for those who remain.”

Another veteran described the newsroom mood as “just an overall gloom.”

“You’re cutting 20 percent of the staff, so it’s 20 percent less good of a product, and it might not get any better. What’s left? Is it a quality product you’re working on?” the veteran asked.

I caught this reference to Star-Bulletin owner David Black buried in a story about David Radler, the right hand man of the other and better known Black (Conrad).

“If he really is smart about this whole thing, once he serves his time he should have lunch with a guy called David Black (CEO of Black Press Group),” he said.

“Here’s a guy who took a lot of small-town newspapers, weeklies, dailies, some on the margins, some making a little bit of extra money, and turned it into a mini-empire that’s doing exceptionally well.”

And so it goes this somewhat wet Thursday morning.