If you’ve got nothing better to do this afternoon, consider tuning in to Bytemarks Cafe on Hawaii Public Radio’s KIPO (89.3 FM) from 5-6 p.m. where I’ll be talking about blogs and blogging with hosts Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa. You can call in and take part as well. Sounds like it could be fun.

Oops. 5:30 a.m. and the sound of the city garbage truck backing down our street reminds me that I forgot to put out the trash last night after the community association meeting. That’s starting out the day on the wrong foot.

Heard at last night’s meeting…The Hawaii Food Bank has cut down on what is being delivered to every area on the island, including coast from Kaaawa to Kahuku. There’s just not enough food to meet the needs, and smaller local groups are seeking help in filling the gap. And due to budget cuts at the state and city levels, neighborhood boards have been told they can no longer expect city agencies and staff to make community presentations on key issues before the boards. Instead, information will trickle down to the neighborhood boards through designated agency representatives. Fewer opportunities for the public to hear about issues first hand.

Business Week highlights Hawaii’s tourism slump by picking up an AP story by Jaymes Song.

A New York Times analysis yesterday attributes the major woes of newspaper companies, including the now bankrupt Tribune Co., to an investment “bubble” that saw newspaper buyouts and consolidation fueled by high amounts of debt and leverage.

But the companies in the weakest condition are there largely because they borrowed a lot of money to buy papers, often at inflated prices, and the biggest of those deals were struck in 2006 and early 2007. Tribune’s was the biggest of those deals, $8.2 billion to take private the company whose assets include The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and 23 television stations, a transaction that almost tripled the company’s debt.

In the year before that takeover was announced, the McClatchy Company bought Knight Ridder, including papers like The Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star; the MediaNews Group bought several papers, including The San Jose Mercury News and The Pioneer Press in St. Paul; investors in Philadelphia bought The Inquirer and The Daily News; a private equity firm, Avista Capital Partners, bought The Star Tribune in Minneapolis. Smaller companies like GateHouse Media bought up dozens of local papers.

If it were possible to unwind those deals, “the business would still be in pretty difficult shape,” said John Puchalla, a vice president and senior analyst for Moody’s Investors Service.

“It wouldn’t have changed the downturn,” he said. “But it sure would have changed the vulnerability to the downturn. Ten to 15 years ago, most newspapers were carrying a pretty low amount of debt. But companies have levered up over time, and in the last couple of years, some companies pushed it too far.”

Most newspapers still have earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization that are equal to 10 to 20 percent of their revenue. That is down from 20 to 30 percent in the middle of this decade, but tolerable — if not for the burden of making debt payments.

It’s sounding an awful lot like Hawaii’s hotel industry from the wave of resort sales at high prices to Japanese comanies in the 1980s, which left debt-ridden hotels struggling during subsequent visitor slowdowns. The only solution in the case of our hotels were the eventual fire sales in which resort properties were turned over to new owners for pennies on the dollar. Freed from the excessive debt, the new owners could afford the renovations needed to keep up with the market.

It looks like newspapers (and newspaper owners) may have to go through a similar process if any of them are going to survive this period of economic and technological turmoil.

I have to go back and relabel yesterday’s photos of the old Gilmore Hall. I found a note that they were taken in October 1973. I initially guessed that they dated from 1972.

And here’s another oldie from the same period. The Waikiki skyline as it appeared in March 1972. Click for a larger version, as usual.