The Star-Bulletin’s Alex Da Silva, who knows UH well, writes today about the university’s ailing facilities and maintenance backlog.

Here’s a highlight:

Budget documents from last year show that the university requested a total of $165 million to repair its campuses, with $28 million going to the Manoa Campus Center to add a fitness center, several gyms and student activity centers.

All of those requests were pared back to one $40 million lump sum for the school to use as it wished.

Good job and a necessary read.

On the other hand, the S-B web site today features an over the top graphic, likely in the print edition as well, which appears to depict Saint Jones ascending to the heavens while the Marlboro man rides into the sunset. Sometimes you hit, and sometimes you miss. This would qualify in my book at the latter.

Speaking of UH, I’ve never run into the UH Manoa Media Log before. It’s a searchable archive of published stories about the campus and, although not completely up to date, certainly worth a look now and then.

And I’ve got to comment that although the Advertiser’s relentless “breaking news” effort is often trivial or reduced to a source of chuckles, it shined during the chaotic unraveling of the June Jones story yesterday. The Star-Bulletin was hours behind in getting basic news of the morning’s events onto its web site.

Tidbits…Shares of newspaper companies lost $11 BILLION in value last year, according to the blog, “Reflections of a Newsosaur“…The Seattle Marathon is facing an audit in the face of several issues, including questions about the event’s executive director’s role in a private company that has contracts with the marathon….The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been looking at the Port of Seattle, and it certainly would be interesting to see some similar digging behind the scenes of Hawaii harbors.

The New York Times featured a story yesterday on Big Think, described as “a YouTube for ideas”, while another newcomer getting a plug, Spock.com, is currently down while new features are being added.