First, the news that you’ve probably been waiting for. I finally managed to finish up the Kaaawa Cats calendar for 2009, featuring Leo, Kili, and Romeo on the cover. Inside, all of our current nine cats strut their stuff. Available for order now. Just click on the photo and you’ll be taken to the right place. Hopefully.
No one cuts you any slack after an election. Barack Obama may have to wait another two months before actually becoming president, but legislators in Hawaii begin their terms on the day of their election.
This means that legislators who lost their seats had to show up and begin packing up and vacating their offices the day after the election, while those who return for the upcoming session jockey for potential new office assignments.
Although the Senate made its leadership decisions this week, it looks like deal-making in the House will put off attempts to organize until next week, with Calvin Say’s position as Speaker at stake.
It was just a year and a half ago that I wrote about BlueEarth Biofuels, which was successfully pushed a bill through the Legislature for authority to issue $59 million in special purpose revenue bonds, pushed by Hawaiian Electric.
Now the former partners have had a falling out. BlueEarth has sued HECO in a Texas federal court, accusing the Hawaii utility of obtaining its confidential information and then cutting a deal with Aloha Petroleum, also named in the suit. Rob Parsons, writing for MauiTime Weekly, got the scoop.
Don’t miss the commentary by Meda and a colleague that appears in today’s Honolulu Advertiser.
Meanwhile, the Advertiser is on course for the announced layoffs at its Pacific Media Publications subsidiary, which publishes its community newspapers and free classifieds newspapers.
According to the Hawaii Newspaper Guild web site, some former PMP employees will be moved to the Advertiser.
The company is planning on bringing 10 former PMP people to the Advertiser – five in outside sales, two writers, who will be in Custom Publishing and three artists, who will also be in Custom Publishing.
More on the situation at the Advertiser from a reader:
The problem with the Advertiser, these days, is that it’s taking a sharp turn to the right but it’s not being made public. Wire stories unfavorable to the Bush administration are toned down or not run at all, reporters and line editors who are known to be involved in the union or who object to what is, in effect, a sub rosa censorship project are being targeted. Ultimately, of course, there is a chill that leads to self-censorship by the remaining staff.
I think you and other informed commentators need to start paying attention to this. And, by the way, I think you should have given much more attention to the threatening message Assistant Managing Editor Sandee Oshiro sent a freelance student blogger during the brief blogging strike. The views she expressed are unconscionable and the implied threat vile, especially when one considers that her husband is head of the UH department the student is in.
By the way, that message was prominently posted on the Guild’s newsroom bulletin board until last week, when the Guild decided to take it down at the request of editor Mark Platte. This in a meeting where the Guild also decided to end its video strike. Much has changed since the company opened its books and showed it was losing money.
Another question about the Advertiser was raised in a comment posted yesterday. The question: Why is Advertiser Editor Mark Platte on the newspaper’s editorial board, as noted by another reader’s comment? The rest of that question is simply implied, and that is–What about the usual wall between editorial and news content?
And so it goes.
It’s Feline Friday again, and so time for another round of photos, most taken yesterday afternoon. This is a good shot of Mr. Duke, all 19+ pounds of him.
When we got home on Monday evening, Ms. Kili dragged in with a terrible limp, unable to put any weight on her right rear leg. I immediately turned around at took her to VCA for a check, just in case. As far as our favorite vet could determine, nothing broken. We decided to put off taking x-rays and instead see if we can skate by with pain killer and rest. She can get around the house now, but still has quite a limp, so the jury is still out.
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I’m not sure what to make of the question about the Advertiser’s editor being on the editorial board that forms the paper’s opinions, but I’m very concerned that he may not have provided an honest explanation of the board’s failure to endorse any candidate for president, for the first time in memory. If it is true that he and the publisher were against Obama and held the paper’s endorsement because of their political views, they should say so and explain why, and admit that “staffing constraints” were not the real reason. Then they can explain why two men who are not from Hawaii should make such a decision for a Hawaii institution such as the Advertiser despite the overwhelming support here for Obama and the historic significance of this election for our state. This issue really calls the Advertiser’s credibility into question, and I think we all deserve some real answers.
I’ve had my hair on fire about the Advertiser’s lack of a “firewall” between editorial and news for years now and the last time I checked they were the largest metropolitan daily in the country with a managing editor that oversees both. The fact that we now find out he actually sits on the editorial board is mindbogglingly unethical. It’s disgraceful.
In my time at The Advertiser, the structure was much the same as it is now, and my guess is it’s not much different.
In those days the editor, George Chaplin, reported to the publisher (and owner) Thurston Twigg-Smith, whose prerogative it was to have whatever he wanted published on either the editorial page or in the news columns.
Now, as the representative of the owner, the Gannett Co., Lee Webber has that power.
Chaplin supervised both news and editorial content. In consultation with the editorial board, he directed editorial writing and selected the editorial cartoons.
Each day, following the afternoon news conference which included all the section editors, the news editor, managing editor and executive editor, I told Chaplin what our plans were for the next day’s paper.
It was only rarely that he would want news play changed, and more rarely that he wanted to see a story before it was published, except for investigative and potentially libelous pieces.
As for separation of news and editorial, as managing editor, I was in charge of the newsroom and John Griffin was in charge of the editorial pages. Most of the time we greeted each other warmly, but didn’t discuss the other’s territory.
That said, it is foolish to think that the owner cannot override decisions made by any editor–news or editorial.
Freedom of the press exists only for those who own the press.
aloha,
Mike Middlesworth
Advertiser managing editor 1973-1985
BTW: I think Andy Parx is wrong about the current structure. They have an editor, two managing editors and an editorial page editor.
As to who does what, I know not.
minor point… but i can’t preview the calendar pages for kaaawa cats like i can for the other calendars…. if it would be possible to be able to do so, that would be cool.
I’ve added the preview for the Kaaawa Cats Calendar, as requested.
Mark Platte is apparently in charge of both news and opinion, even if he does have seperate underlings in charge of each. Just having people from the news end on the ed board is almost unheard of at a paper that size.
Webber was notorious on Guam for using the Gannett daily there in pushing his personal views, particularly on major issues like privatization of the water system and gambling voter initiatives, at least according to numerous online forums regarding that paper’s coverage.
It appears not much has changed since his move to Hawaii.