Richard Borreca has an important story today reporting on a significant court decision on Maui, where a state judge struck down a Campaign Spending Commission interpretation that barred corporations, unions, and political action committees from contributing more than a total of $1,000 to candidates during last year’s elections. But the stunner was that the decision apparently was issued nearly three weeks ago on May 4, and is just getting reported now. Another sign that newsrooms have been cut to the point that even major decisions like this one can slip under the radar, and beats have become so diffuse that reporters have trouble keeping up via their normal network of sources.

I was stunned by this paragraph from Ann Miller’s story on Michelle Wie in Sunday’s Honolulu Advertiser:

Wie is as spontaneous and precociously politically correct as ever during interviews, but now there are guidelines outside the golf course: No golf questions; nothing about the wrist problems that have bothered her since late last year; and, no specifics about what the future holds for her golf game and her family’s place here, with the exception of Wie saying “wherever I move, Hawai’i will be my home state always.”

That’s quite a list of conditions to have agreed to. This must have caused some consternation among editors at the Advertiser. It would be interesting to hear a bit more discussion of the pros and cons of agreeing to an interview under such limiting conditions.

Then there was Saturday night’s shooting up on the North Shore, apparently the product of another fight between groups. According to the Advertiser:

Police were searching for a suspect yesterday after a man was shot to death during a brawl on the North Shore Saturday night.

It sounded familiar, so I did a quick Google search. What in the heck is going on?

From the Star-Bulletin:

3/31/2003 2 groups of men fight after beef on freeway.

10/18/2005 Police said an officer was choked and punched in the back of the head Wednesday while breaking up a fight between two large groups of men at a park in Salt Lake.

6/17/2002 A 31-year-old man was shot in the left leg last night near the Ala Wai Playground after an argument between two groups of men

5/16/2005 At about the same time Scott was attacked, a police officer was breaking up some street fights between groups of men around the corner on Seaside Avenue.

2/21/2003 Police are looking for a suspect who hit a 22-year-old man in the head with a leg from a wooden barstool during a fight between two groups of men in Waikiki

11/24/2003 Police said two groups of men and boys had agreed to a fistfight at the parking lot at 1 Aloha Tower Drive at about 3:30 am yesterday…

Well, you get the idea. These items are from one search of a single newspaper. Anecdotal evidence, certainly, but it sure looks like there’s a larger issue here.

Changing topics again, a reader aimed a bit of criticism at another recent Star-Bulletin story:

This is an actual sentence from BJ Reyes’ 5/18/2007 about Hawaii gas prices: “Skeptics might say it is only a matter of time before Hawaii’s prices follow suit and shatter records, but that might not be the case this year, according to some analysts.”

In his next sentence, BJ quotes Paul Brewbaker, who is a great bank economist but he’s hardly an oil industry analyst. Brewbaker also appears to be the only independent observer quoted in the story.

At best, this “might say” and “might not” stuff is what my professor would have called limp-wristed journalism. At worst, it’s simply a bunch of BS that isn’t fit for a daily newspaper, considering Hawaii’s history of problems in the consumer gasoline market and the SB’s history of investigating the industry.