Ilima Loomis at the Maui News had an excellent investigative story yesterday (“Air Force police: Tools missing to do job“) concerning complaints by federal civilian police officers who provide security for the Air Force Maui Optical & Supercomputing Site on Haleakala. Her investigation drew on copies of a series of internal complaints and supporting documents filed by a number of civilian police officers about an ongoing lack of equipment and training needed to do their jobs.
The officers complained hey have no guns or other weapons, lack basic equipment such as handcuffs, are given no clear understanding of their powers of arrest, if any, no means of communication with local police, and the list goes on and on.
Loomis followed up with interviews with Air Force officials, officials of the Fraternal Order of Police, and a mainland security consultant. It’s a very good story, exposing serious security issues and gross administrative failures by Air Force officials in charge. Administrators claimed the issues had been dealt with, while continuing complaints, leaked to the Maui News, show the result was retaliation against those complaining officers and no change in actual conditions.The Maui News gave it appropriate play. The story runs a full 79 column inches, Loomis said.
The Star-Advertiser reduced the investigation to a two-paragraph rewrite filed in its “Newswatch” column under the headline: “Air Force, police resolve officers’ beefs.”
It simply recites an empty denial by the commander of the facility, which was contradicted in the story by documents obtained by the Maui News. You wouldn’t know that from the Star-Advertiser’s version.
So goes the news.
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I was looking up the editor-in-chief of the SA on the Internet to find out his journalistic background, and I found only two clear facts about him: 1) He is a college dropout, and 2) he was a strong supporter of George W. Bush.
What we find in the SA is a lack of basic resources and perhaps organizational skills to do a minimal job of reportage, but we also perhaps encounter a deep, conservative complacency that everything is going to be alright.
I am reminded of the last election, where the SA endorsed a slew of candidates from both parties — and often misspelled their names. One got the impression that the SA did not know anything about most of the candidates and simply picked the horse that seemed at the time most likely to win the race, typically the incumbent.
If you got a crew of managers together who weren’t good at managing and who don’t know anything about journalism and put them in a distant, somewhat exotic provincial locale to run a newspaper, the SA is the product that one might expect.
Underlying this rather crude complacency displayed by the SA, one also gets the faint but distinct whiff of the ‘authoritarian personality’. This also explains some of the political characters they endorse.
No surprise on the SA take on the story. On a related matter the wife asked this morning why all the photographs of the new Miss Hawaii, in the paper and online in Pulse, were so dark? I replied they have no competition and no pride in their work anymore!
SAdvertiser, don’t lump all the SA editors together. When they killed the Advertiser they kept many of the editors BUT put them under the losers you are talking about. The way journalism has evolved recently anyone working, at any level, is happy to be working and are probably keeping their opinions to themselves.
I won’t even discuss the SA’s article, but I’m left with a number of questions from Loomis’ article. What Ilima doesn’t make clear is what does ‘civilian police’ mean. It is my understanding that the responsibilities of an AF police officer can vary from serving as what is essentially as the the job title describes to a shiny security guard.
Furthermore, what isn’t abundantly clear is whether or not the site is high risk/high priority. It is
Additionally, the credentials of the complainants might of helped. After a brief Google search, it appears that most, if not all, were former MPD.
The Sadvertiser has put an interesting editorial about itself brimming with optimism. Could it be true? Earlier today there were a number of comments, all negative; I came back now and found that the comments had been deleted. I am just wondering if the “facts” stated in the article/editorial are true. Is it a profitable newspaper? If so, why? Monopoly status or efficiencies of scale, or a radical cutting back of services? Is revenue really growing? Did they really “give” $1 million to local charities, or did they simply give them free advertising space that no one else wanted? Are people really as satisfied with the SA as their poll suggested, or was it rigged? Will people really pay for the planned paid content model? Personally, I have lost interest in reading that paper, and I only read that one article today after skimming titles (and I came here to post my comments to an educated readership).
http://www.staradvertiser.com/business/20110607__StarAdvertiser_forecasts_continued_growth.html
Star-Advertiser forecasts continued growth
As the paper starts its second year after the consolidation, readership is high
By Allison Schaefers
“The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the byproduct of the consolidation of two distressed dailies, expects to grow revenues next year and share another $1 million or so with the community as it did during its first year in business.
“”Revenues were on pace this year, and we are looking to next year with cautious optimism,” said Dennis Francis, president and publisher of Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press Ltd., the Star-Advertiser’s parent company.
“The Star-Advertiser, which was profitable in its first month, is projecting 3 to 4 percent growth in 2012, Francis said.
“”Our first-year numbers were in line with most other profitable dailies around the country,” Francis said. “I think most businesses now are feeling like they are beginning to come out of the recessionary times.”
“The newspaper, the 60th-largest daily in the nation and the largest in the state with an average circulation of 124,000 daily (139,000 on Sunday), published its first issue a year ago today. Its creation was the result of Gannett Co.’s decision to end nearly four decades of newspaper ownership in Hawaii and sell The Honolulu Advertiser to Canadian-based Black Press, owner of its longtime rival the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
“The Star-Advertiser has become the flagship daily among the more than 100 Black Press newspapers in western Canada, Washington, Ohio and Hawaii. The Akron Beacon Journal, Black’s second-largest newspaper, sells 95,000 copies daily and 125,000 on Sunday.”