While Star-Bulletin owner David Black is in the process of expanding his newspaper chain with the proposed purchase of the Honolulu Advertiser, he’s pursuing continued cutbacks at the Akron Beacon-Journal, which Black bought in 2006, according to a story in Crain’s Cleveland Business.

The Newspaper Guild ratified a new three-year contract that calls for the equivalent of a 10% cut.

The agreement includes a 2.11% decrease to base pay, a reduction in the work week to 37.5 hours from 40 and a week of unpaid vacation in 2010.

The union said the contract was an improvement from the original 25% to 30% cut in wages and benefits that the newspaper had requested.

Union members still were miffed that concessions weren’t asked of newsroom managers or other nonunion employees, according to the statement.

“We felt this was the best deal we could get for our members,” Mr. DeMay said. “That doesn’t mean we like it.”

Speaking of newsrooms, did you happen to catch the newsroom brawl featured on CNN a few days ago? It gives “news wars” a new meaning.

Several days ago, an entry here dealt with the current legal challenges to criminal charges for “denial of honest services”, and the latest argument that was part of the appeal of Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling. A transcript of the U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments is now available. Read on.

Whichever side of the Superferry debate you were on, hopefully you’ll find it possible to laugh at this adaptation of the Hitler video that’s made the rounds previously with alternate subtitles. The reader who forwarded this to me attributes it to “a friend who was one of the bigwigs at the SuperFerry….”

According to the YouTube description:

Hitler finds out that he won’t be able to ride the Hawaii SuperFerry to his “Global Warlord” coronation ball on Maui. This makes him a little bit unhappy. His fallback is to ride TheBoat at least…

Oh, fair warning: Contains some strong language.

Let’s see. Could this be an example of why the UH administration is having problems? An email arrived yesterday at a few minutes after 6 p.m. addressed to me as a member of the UH Alumni Association. It lists a number of UH events and invites participation, but it was a little late. The problem: Several of the lead events took place several days earlier, and one was due to start in just over an hour.

At first I thought the mail had been delayed somehow in my mail queue, but then I found an online version of the same message and see that it’s dated March 10. And this despite spending quite a bit on a professional public relations staff.

It’s just a small thing, and I know I shouldn’t be so picky, but it seems so symptomatic of larger issues.

Finally, Meda found our first glass ball of the year on Monday morning. Enjoy.