Reading through the list of stories receiving awards from SPJ last night is a reminder that there’s a lot of good reporting going on here despite the woes of the news industry.

Along that same line of thought, Liz Donovan’s Informaniac/Behind the News blog (one of those on my regular visit list) points to one assessment of a blogger’s claim to provide news not available in the mainstream media. Examined closely, the sources were largely newspaper stories or other blogs commenting on newspaper stories

In any case, congratulations to all the winners and finalists in the SPJ Excellence in Journalism competition.

Both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin reported today that Honolulu Airport’s air traffic control system went down in the middle of the day on Thursday. That’s not good news. But I have to wonder why it took until Saturday to report this? Neither story says how the incident became public or what procedures might be in place to inform the public when these emergencies occur.

I was surprised by the tone of yesterday’s Star-Bulletin editorial about the legislature’s overrides of Lingle vetoes. It made me wonder whether the writer had ever read the bills or just spun a yarn based on the spin Lingle’s veto messages. One of three bills dismissed in a couple of sentences was a sunshine-related bill requiring the UH Board of Regents to make public certain information about administrative salaries and the regents own expenditures, information which appears to be required to be public under the state’s Sunshine Law, usually a media favorite, but which the regents had refused to provide in a timely manner. Somehow the Star-Bulletin failed to mention this when they so smugly as simply “a desire by Democrats (and, by implication, a bad desire) to delve into the details of how the executive branch operates.”

Regarding another bill that would provide authority for the state to re-regulate interisland airlines, the editorial acts as if legislators simply ignored the fact that “has no legal autonomy to regulate interisland flights.” Actually, the bill contains a key proviso:

…provided that section 2 shall take effect upon the enactment of federal legislation permitting implementation of that section.

What the bill accomplishes is to provide a regulatory structure that can be used to show the state’s intent while lobbying Congress for the power to take control of our vital interisland transportation system. By ignoring this proviso, the S-B editorial made it sound like legislators were just unaware of the limits of state authority.

Early education? Does the Star-Bulletin really want to dismiss the bill establishing the important groundwork of a comprehensive early education system as part of a legislative power trip mistakenly delving into apparently off-limits ” details of how the executive branch operates”?

Unfortunately, the Capitol’s computer system is down again this weekend while they continue work on a major electrical upgrade, so I can’t link to the bills themselves. A list of the bills appears on the House Majority Blog.

Overall, it’s the kind of editorial that clearly reflected someone’s political bias but ends up undermining the credibility of the newspaper’s editorial voice, and that is unfortunate.

I’m glad to see the Advertiser’s Capitol Notebook blog back online, this time simply as “The Notebook“, without the constraints of the Capitol. Yesterday’s post mentions three legislators who have apparently signed the Stop Rail Now petition, but doesn’t point out that all–Luke, Saiki, and Berg–have been among the minority of reps opposed at key junctures to House Speaker Calvin Say’s leadership. Does this indicate that the faction which describes itself as “progressive” has decided to support the anti-rail movement, which, although displaying a bit of populism, is quite politically conservative at its base?

I’ve got a personal as well as a political interest in the answer since I’ve worked in Rep. Berg’s office for the past three sessions. The comings and goings of political coalitions is always interesting.

I’m trying out a new lens. It is a very wide-angle zoom, Tokina’s 12-24mm for my Canon Digital Rebel. I couldn’t justify spending another 50% for Canon’s own version, which generally gets the highest marks from reviewers. But it looks like I’ll have fun getting to know this lens and use it effectively.

In any case, here’s our beach in Kaaawa with the benefit of this wider perspective. Click for a bigger version.