I’m trying to understand why today’s Star-Advertiser has virtually no news of yesterday’s storm in either the print edition or online edition.
Let’s see. News reports indicate record water levels in Waihee Stream and Kahana Stream.
In its very brief “Newswatch” item this morning, the Star-Advertiser notes:
Kamehameha Highway was closed in both directions in the area of Waikane Valley due to heavy rain and flooding, and police scanner transmissions report that at least one stranded motorist was sitting on the roof of his vehicle. Traffic was being turned around at Waiahole and Waikane roads.
Now folks in town might be forgiven for not seeing the seriousness of this. We often read about, say, Kapiolani being closed and traffic rerouted to parallel streets.
Out here in Koolauloa, though, closing Kam Highway means you can’t get to a whole segment of the island without taking the two hour drive up through Wahiawa and Haleiwa, through to Kahuku and then down the windward coast. And with deep water reported in Punaluu, our part of the island was apparently cut off for hours.
Forgive me for thinking that having a part of the island cut off for hours might be news. Could emergency vehicles get through? Fire? Ambulance? Any photos? Any reporters on the scene, or as close as could be gotten to the scene of the flooding?
From online comments, it wasn’t much better in Kailua and Kaneohe.
It seems that Sunday’s Star-Advertiser had gone to press and any news from Saturday would just have to wait. But that doesn’t explain the absence of online reporting on the mess. Would the old Advertiser and Star-Bulletin both have failed to get anything substantive for Sunday editions? I doubt it.
Here’s what one reader said in a comment left here earlier today.
After online criticism of the SA online story and photo of Palolo Stream closeup, taken saturday morning, they have replaced the photo with an Ad!
I would say print journalism and their online versions have reached a new low here, maybe I should say “print” journalism here is dead?
Another comment from the Star-Advertiser web site:
Saturday night the Windward community of Oahu experienced one of the most powerful thunderstorms in recent years. The storm produced some of the most amazing lightning and loudest thunder heard. The storm caused power outages, homes where flooded, a car washed away and road closures. Between 4-8 inches of rain fell last night. I expected to read a good story and see some fantastic photos by Star-Advertiser staff this morning but found nothing on this website… I guess it was more important to stay dry then report and document the news… Come on Star-Advertiser, It’s time to step it up and cover the SPOT news…
I would hope there’s a lot of second guessing going on at the S-A today, but maybe they’re just congratulating themselves on avoiding overtime. I don’t know.
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C’mon. It’s not like there is a brand new Marriot hotel up in Laie or something. You know, an important destination. If there was something like that, a road closure would be noteworthy.
I often wonder why the constant squeezing of the middle class doesn’t make the front page
doesn’t the skyrocketing sewer rate when combined with the rising water rates concern anyone in the working class?
The city said the increase will raise sewer bills for a typical homeowner from about $95 per month Friday to about $160 per month in 2016, a 68 percent increase.
Read more: http://www.kitv.com/politics/28126077/detail.html#ixzz1OQjLufP2
everyone should keep in mind that is expected to be a lost decade — we won’t be earning more but the expense side will more than double!
Also, in the SA’s current article, there is no mention of any hail on the windward side, which is all the talk of the town. I mean, hail in Hawaii — that’s something that would get on international news.
I notice that there seems to be a gap between the content of the stories and their titles on topics relevant to land development. For example, one will find articles with titles like “Hawaii Real Estate Bounces Back” or “Rail on Track to Move Oahu” or “Laie Project Big Boost to Tourism”, but the actual articles are much more ambivalent and nuanced, even critical. This might be evidence of a big gulf between the editorial staff and the journalists. The former seem to be tasked with the job of simply appeasing the status quo in the face of a dramatically changing journalistic landscape.
One would think that in the midst of a radically changing environment, bold new directions and ideas would be explored and fresh blood brought in. Instead, the publisher (a Canadian who lives far from Hawaii) seems to have panicked and simply bought out the competition and staffed the management with gray, middle-aged, status quo types. The natural reaction to that seems to be a stimulus to creating new media like Civil Beat. Indeed, my own behavior has changed in the past few months. I used to first read the SA, and then maybe perhaps I might read Civil Beat and ilind.net; now it is completely reversed. In the morning I come here, and in the evening I glance over the online version of the SA and less and less read the actual story (and I only skim the story now, and go straight to the comment section, where the real meat is waiting).
I wish that Civil Beat would put a few local blogs on it’s site as articles, even sites found in the SA. The SA has a way of hiding blogs when they are critical of the status quo (say, on the rail project) but putting the same blog front and center when the blogger is supportive (say, on the Big Wind project). As an example, here is a blog entry by Jay Fidell that questions the rail project; there were no comments because the SA buried that entry.
http://thinktech.honadvblogs.com/2011/05/24/will-current-controversies-change-public-opinion-on-rail/
Will current controversies change public opinion on rail?
May 24th, 2011
by Jay Fidell
“Rail has been in the paper plenty lately, and after years of controversy it’s becoming even more controversial. How will this change things?
“Sumitomo has filed a protest to the contract the City gave Ansaldo. Sumitomo says the total cost of its bid was less than the total cost of the Ansaldo bid. Surely, this would be relevant to those who examine and select low bids. We do want the low bid, don’t we? Something is fishy in Railville.
“The Ansaldo award is another symptom of our forced and foggy thinking. Just as the Ansaldo award was questionable, the decision about rail in general was questionable. The whole process has been yes railroaded without due diligence or genuine public discussion, first under Mufi Hannemann and now Peter Carlisle. The legatee has accepted a plainly defective legacy.
“And now Ben Cayetano and others have filed a suit pointing out that the EIS did not contain the requisite alternative analysis and must therefore fail, adding fuel to the legal fires burning around rail, and to mounting public concerns about how we got here. Perhaps the tide is turning?
“Many people feel there has been a hoodwinking, and that had there been a proper discussion we would never had gone down this road. In any event, rail is not going anywhere without serious and continuing controversy, on the procurement and contracting issues, on the condemnation issues and, of course, on the basic question of whether to go ahead.
“Why is it that this big bad project has gone so far and we have spent so many tens of millions digging a hole in the sand? The confusion has gone widespread. Why can’t we do better on a project so large? The answer: because it is so large. Ten billion does have a way of gathering flies. That’s my estimate of what it will cost given the overruns Parsons Brinckerhoff had at the Big Dig in Boston.
“Some say that rail will meet the fate that so many large projects in Hawaii ultimately meet. We seem to have a problem with large projects. We get intimidated somehow, and we make mistakes in planning them and also in executing them. It’s embarrassing. We seem to get distracted by a swarm of special interests, and we wind up losing our perspective. Our officials seem to disregard the larger picture and flout the greater good, despite their promises to the contrary.
“We can’t afford rail, and we can’t afford to wait 20 years to deal with our horrendous congestion. So why are we barking up this $10 billion tree? We have to reorder our priorities and soon. We have to fix the traffic and pay our bills, and those things must come first. We don’t have the money to waste on big bad rail projects. To ignore that fact is reckless, and will put all of us in the poorhouse.
“The bright side is that these emerging controversies could also awaken a sleeping public, and that once aroused that public will put the brakes on runaway rail. We can hope, can’t we?
“This subject was discussed at a panel at the Book and Music Festival at Honolulu Hale last weekend. Also, ThinkTech and the Hawaii Venture Capital Association will present a related luncheon panel program called “Big Projects in Hawaii: are they are track?” on Thursday, May 26th at the Plaza Club. To learn morer, visit hvca.org.”
I believe the S-A writes its material for the weekend and Monday ahead. I wonder how many people are allowed to actually work over the weekend? It’s not just the storm news that was omitted, if you pay attention, the weekends seem to be often left out.
A certain minimum staff must work on part of the layout and production. Part of the paper is already completed before the weekend and stored for assembly.
All I can do is guess that this is the case, I doubt that any current employee would comment.
The number of typos, odd headlines and the high proportion of aggregated material hint of a very low-budget operation.
Again, that’s my guess. You have more inside knowledge than I.
Well there is an on-line story this morning time stamped 12:30 am, but it does not contain much original reporting. No pictures or eyewitness accounts. There was a lot of this or that was reported and this spokesperson said. They probably had one person in the news room calling around to the different agencies soliciting comment and putting together a story. They certainly did not have any reporters in the field.
Oahu folk should not lament being ignored, think of us poor N-Island readers. Look at tsunami coverage in Kona where confused reporter did not know where she was.
Seems as though that section of Kamehameha Hwy in Waikane is always flooding. Seems to come from the Bay side. Wonder if the state has any plans to do something about it. Lots of state folks there this morning to clean up.
Funny, I was wondering the same thing. When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was check the news. I live in Ka‘a‘awa also, and I was very surprised to see NOTHING, not one word, nada. I felt a bit insulted, because this storm was the biggest I’ve seen in my 18 years on this island. The NWS was reporting record levels last night, but apparently this warranted no reporting whatsoever by the SA. Very disappointing…
I was in Waikoloa this weekend (so missed all the excitement on Oahu). I was struck by the difference between the SA and West Hawaii Today. Sunday’s WHT had a huge, front page article on the Half-Ironman that had taken place the day before, along with some other relevant local development articles, etc. There was better relevant and timely reporting in that paper than I’ve seen in the SA in years.
I’m wondering if print media is to survive, will this be the direction to go in?
The problems are:
1. They keep resurfacing Kam Hwy. It raises the road level and forces the water into adjacent lower elevation homes.
2. They don’t plan. Why approve Marriott Hotel with no serious flood mitigation? It will only cause more flood problems in Laie.
3. They poured millions of dollars into the wrong projects. The bridges they replaced were not the problematic flooding problems.
4. They don’t regulate private landowners like Hawaii Reserves to clean their private streams starting from the mountains to the lowlands.
Corporate Greed, don’t get off topic. We are bashing the SA here. Get with the program or reverand Ian will kick you out of his choir!!
I believe the Monopoly Newspaper had trouble publishing at all this weekend, thanks to power blips that trashed the layout systems.