The crowd at yesterday’s teach-in on the budget crisis at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus was estimated at “over 500”, while organizers said they signed up 700 people who provided email addresses to be notified of future actions.

Please click on the photo for more views of the event.

After a march through the heart of the campus by as many as 100 students, the crowed gathered and grew in the hot noon sun on the lawn in front of Hawaii Hall to listen to 90 minutes of speakers. Offices of the Manoa Chancellor and her staff are located it the building. It was the largest, or at least one of the largest campus gatherings in years, according to observers.

There was a real sense of unity, some not apparent to casual observers. For example, although Hawaiian programs have so far been exempt from budget cuts, faculty and students from Hawaiian Studies were prominent on the program and among the organizers of the event, a powerful political statement.

But despite the high level of campus interest and the high stakes involved for higher education statewide, and implications for the UHPA contract negotiations, neither Honolulu daily appears to have reported on the event today.

Lingle was called a “liar” by several speakers as a result of her claims about the budget, including a professor of accounting. His speech drew loud applause and comments (“That’s an accounting professor! I’m gonna change my major!”).

But you won’t read about it in our daily newspapers today. You can read a bit more in the UH campus newspaper, Ka Leo.

This really is a puzzle. Newspapers (and other advertising vehicles) claim to be desperate to attract the college/university student demographic, but they ignore news relevant to exactly that group of potential readers. Cutting out the higher education beat means far less hard news that could accustom students to reading newspapers. Students have interests that go beyond clubs and music. Hello?

Meanwhile, we have another two-newspaper morning to report, with parallel stories left wondering if they’re covering the same bill.

From today’s Honolulu Advertiser:

Deal ensures Guam jobs will go to U.S. workers

By John Yaukey
Advertiser Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators reached agreement yesterday on legislation that would ensure that many of the jobs created on Guam by the transfer of Marines to the island will go to American workers from Hawai’i and the Mainland.
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The 2010 defense authorization bill contains provisions by Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai’i, that would strip away some incentives for bringing foreign workers to Guam, while establishing greater federal oversight of the massive project there.

But from today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin:

Abercrombie loses Guam wage fight

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie has lost a battle with the Navy over workers’ wages.

House and Senate converees yesterday rejected his proposal to require contractors to hire Americans for 70 percent of the jobs created on Guam to accommodate the move of 8,000 Marines and their families being relocated from Okinawa.

And in other media trivia, yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser also contained a correction:

The final six paragraphs about safety requirements in a story on Page B1 yesterday (Tuesday) on the death of a diver were copied from a June 9 Department of Land and Natural Resources press release and did not have attribution.

The original story has been corrected to add contain the proper attribution, and the updated version of the story is available online with the correction noted at the bottom.

That appears to be a good way to handle an embarrassing slip-up.

And here’s another of my ongoing media gripes. I thought newspapers are supposed to be trying to make highest and best use of the opportunities created by the web to provided additional information to readers.

So why do they continue to ignore the opportunity to provide primary documents to readers?

It’s happened again with the lawsuit by a Honolulu police officer alleging test recruitment test results have been altered or “fixed”, and that the department retaliated when the problems were reported.

I’ll pick on the Advertiser, but only because I have Rick Daysog’s story on the lawsuit open on my desktop. How hard would it be to provide a simple link to the document?

In any case, if you would like to look at the actual complaint filed in court, just click here.