A reader offered up a couple of comments on newspaper ethics.

the S-B has started Wednesday food pieces by Jo McGarry run as news pieces but clearly are ad/puff pieces with a small “advertising supplement” at the top on the first page only of the multi-page pieces. the Advertiser did a Wanda Adams long piece on Whole Foods wonderful local foods (not true, just that produce shelf at the entrance) and we learn that the paper is partnering with Whole Foods in a public relations event.

i don’t argue your Leg insider pieces, but there’s so much not-subtle going on in the every-day world that i hope you haven’t lost your peripheral vision. It’s stuff that affects us daily in ways just as important as those campaign contributions — maybe much more.

Point well taken.

K5 news the other night promoted their story on the flu with the grabber, “Surviving Hawaii’s next pandemic”.

What? I think the story also said that we haven’t had a single case yet. And so far this flu has been mild. And when was Hawaii’s last pandemic?

Then Lt. Gov. Aiona got on camera and recommended stashing away a 30-day supply of food, water, and cash. How does that help stave off the flu? That wasn’t at all clear.

And then I started worrying about how much a 30-day supply of water would be. A Google search turned up estimates of average daily water use per person ranging from 63 gallons to 125 gallons. Per person. Per day.

So Aiona seems to be saying that each family of four should have a reservoir with between 1,000 and 2,000 cubic feet of water. That would be a pretty big draw on the Board of Water Supply system.

Anyway, I digress.

I was interested to note that Mayor Mufi Hannemann made heavy use during the 2008 election of a California direct mail outfit, Spaulding Printing. From the list of clients on the company’s web site, it looks like Spaulding is heavily used by Republican campaigns. In Hawaii, besides Mufi Hannemann for Mayor, the company lists past congressional campaigns of Republicans Pat Saiki and Gene Ward.

Maui attorney Ben Lowenthal says he doesn’t know why visitors to the Supreme Court of Hawaii Blog (Unofficial) are automatically sent on after a few seconds to his Hawaii Legal News blog.

And checking out blog posts the other day, I found the following link to a disappeared entry on Larry Geller’s Disappeared News blog (http://disappearednews.com/2009/04/disappeared-news-rejects-cat-pictures.html). Of course, the “cat pictures” part of it caught my attention. But the page is missing.

So I asked Larry about it. Here’s what he had to say:

I wrote a short article mocking the Advertiser’s poll yesterday, promoted in the paper over on the left side of p1 where there could have been news. It was asking whether Hawaii is prepared for the swine flu. My point was that we pay them to tell us that.

On the other hand, wrote I, polls seem to be popular. So I could either try posting cat pictures or I could try a poll to promote my blog. So I found some poll software, because the old blogger template I’m using doesn’t take the newer poll widget, installed it, tested it, and published the article. When I went to try the poll, it really messed up the screen, and I cancelled the article, but not, of course, before the RSS was published.

I may have to try cat pictures. Maybe I can borrow one somewhere.

And before I totally let it get lost in the shuffle, humorist turned blogger Charley Memminger sent over this explanation of his latest career adventure.

Thanks for the mention of my new column “Charleyworld” on your website. First people thought I retired from the Star-Bulletin. Now they think I’ve been hired by the Advertiser. It’s actually neither. I took a voluntary layoff from the Bulletin because I didn’t like the direction the paper was going and particularly the way the staff was being treated. It wasn’t my career goal to work for a one-town tabloid at this point in my career. I figured it was just a good time to part company. And I was able to at least able to save one job for one of the 17 younger people being laid off.

My plan is to try to syndicate my new column, “Charleyworld,” either with an established syndicate or through self-syndication. It’s not the best time to be trying something like this but, who knows? The country certainly needs a few smiles and newspapers across the country are getting rid of their in-house cartoonists and columnists.

The Advertiser was kind enough to become my first client paper, accepting my column on a free-lance basis. And as you noted, they are giving it a great launch, with big house ads and rack cards. As part of my agreement with them, I’m writing a daily blog (Monday through Friday), which is challenging, since I’ve never written a blog before. So far my posts seem more like mini-columns than blogs. Here’s the latest: http://www.charleyworld.honadvblogs.com/.

I’m also the Honolulu Community Humor Examiner at Examiner.com.

And I’m looking for a REAL job, not necessarily to do with writing, something to help pay the mortgage and keep my college age daughter living in the style to which she is rapidly becoming accustomed.

Quitting the Star-Bulletin was hard since, as of May, I would have been there 30 years. (Shockingly, they didn’t give me a gold watch upon my departure.) Time will tell if it was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done or the most brilliant. Right now, my dog Boomer is leaning toward the first.

Cheers,
Charley