i L i n d . n e t

For the second time in a couple of weeks, I somehow disappeared this entry after posting it in the early a.m.

I didn’t discover the problem until just a few minutes ago, after noon Hawaii time.

Apologies.

I’m doing my best to restore the full entry, although I may not remember it all.

Thanks to Jay Hartwell for calling my attention to the upcoming Hawaii visit of Melanie Sill, the Sacramento Bee editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose memo on the future of newspapering was quoted here a few days ago.

Melanie Sill, the Sacramento Bee editor, mentioned in your Saturday post, is coming to Hawai`i September 1-5, to speak at UH. I have attached the flyer.

Sill shared the Pulitizer Prize for Public Service Reporting in 1996, when she was an editor at Raleigh News & Observer. She grew up in Waipahu and reported for her high school newspaper, The Cane Tassel. After college in North Carolina, she tried to get a reporting job in Honolulu, but couldn’t and so returned to Raleigh.

Her visit to the Manoa campus will be the third by a Pulitizer Prize winner with Hawaii ties (Byron Acohido of USA Today and Robert Lopez of the LA Times came previously). This trip is co-sponsored by the Carol Burnett Fund for Responsible Journalism, the Society of Professional Journalists–Hawai`i chapter, Ka Leo O Hawai`i, UH’s School of Communications, Board of Publications, and Department of Co-Curricular Activities, Programs and Services, and Kap`iolani Community College’s journalism program.

Besides her visits to classes, Sill also will be speaking to the SPJ chapter Thursday night, September 4, at a location still being determined, and to high school students attending Journalism Day at Manoa on Saturday, Sept. 6

I can’t tell if any of those are public appearances, but I’m sure Jay will let us know.

A reader pointed to dueling headlines in the Advertiser’s breaking news stories early this a.m.

gotta admit I haven’t looked at the stories yet, but these headlines appeared one after the other on the Advertiser online Business section breaking news list:

“Americans remain gloomy about the economy”

“Stocks jump after upbeat consumer confidence data”

Take your choice, I suppose. At least one of the stories has already scrolled off the ‘Tiser listing, so I’ll leave it to others to track down and compare them.

Reporter Sally Apgar, who was an award-winning reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser and, later, Star-Bulletin, before moving to Florida to join the Sun-Sentinal in Palm Beach, was among those laid off in the latest round of cuts at the paper, according to a list compiled by the local weekly.

While in Hawaii, Apgar won SPJ-Hawaii’s top award for investigative reporting in 1999 for a story on the former Bishop Estate and again for enterprise reporting in 2005 while writing for the Star-Bulletin.

Republican Party officials have now turned the screwups by election officials at the filing deadline into elements of a vast conspiracy, even before the process for sorting out errors and problems has run its course. A statement issued yesterday by the R’s party chairman tries to conflate all problems into a central conspiracy, a good way to stoke the flames among the party faithful but not productive in terms of sorting out the issues.

I don’t blame Democratic Party chairman Brian Schatz for advocating for his candidates during the deadline crunch. I imagine his argument was simply that election officials should process the paperwork and then, with the deadline crunch over, sort out whether the filings were valid. To do it the opposite way–assume they were invalid and not accept the filings–would have been irrevocable. At least this way erred on the side of caution.

And, so far, the system is working, despite all the heated rhetoric. One candidate has been rejected. Two others are being challenged, and the cases for rejecting their nominations also appear strong.

Should I be surprised that many of the same people who rant about keeping politics out of public decisions are the very ones politicizing this situation and making the sorting out the issues more difficult than need be?

In any case, election law is pretty clear. Section 12-3 HRS provides in relevant part: “(c) Nomination papers shall not be filed in behalf of any person for more than one party or for more than one office…”

So in terms of timing, it would appear that either Kirk Caldwell withdrew properly from the House race before filing for City Council, in which case the Democratic Party was too late in selecting a replacement, or he failed to withdraw and instead was allowed to file for two offices in violation of this law.

It continues to be interesting.