Still no word from Gov. Lingle’s office. Perhaps later this week I’ll try a different approach. Stand by.

Honolulu Advertiser editor Mark Platte had an interesting column yesterday describing their editorial process in considering the back story of the recent Extreme Makeover.

The guts of it are buried a bit down in the story:

So why write the story at all?

Because this was information that readers needed to have to form their own opinion about the show’s credibility, which The Advertiser had touted on Page One and television news stations had covered extensively.

The unstated but implicit part of that statement is that the Advertiser, and other media, had relatively uncritically “touted” (according to the dictionary, “To promote or praise energetically; publicize”) not only the program but the tale, the special narrative peddled by the network’s press releases and public relations campaign buzz.

Platte is right. The newspaper had an obligation to readers to publish what it knew that was at odds with the cultivated narrative. The fact that Platte felt he had to publicly defend the decision to publish is interesting in itself, but I’m certainly glad the Advertiser ran with the story.

I also appreciated Platte’s passive and non-specific reference to a connection published first right here (“After the story was published, we learned that Keiki O Ka ‘Aina Preschool Inc.’s administrator Jack Randall is married to Theresa Akana’s mother, Marie Randall.”). That information was noted in my June 30 entry.

At the bottom of the Legislative Reference Bureau’s daily iClips service, there’s a little notice: “Visit the LRB Library online reference desk for newspapers, journals and document delivery services on the Internet.”

So I did. It looks like quite a useful collection of search utilities, but in a quick test I immediately ran into requests for payment to access news stories. It deserves a bit more digging to see which parts are worth using.

Here’s a tidbit. Lt. Gov. Aiona went public to launch the Health Department’s “fruits and veggies” campaign a couple of weeks ago in cooperation with Foodland.

The Health Department’s paperwork submitted to the State Procurement Office shows that although all major grocery chains were invited to take part in the public campaign, all but Foodland apparently snubbed the offer. Foodland was the only chain to respond to the Health Dept’s January 26, 2007 invitation.

Hmmm…I’ll have to consult the data, but as I recall Foodland was a big backer of Governor Lingle’s campaign, so it’s probably not a surprise that the company is willing to step up for a project that will put Lt. Gov. Aiona’s face on television and in newspapers. And, according to the Health Department, this is just a test run for a larger project scheduled to run during the 2008 election year.