The Star-Advertiser had a doozie of a blooper yesterday. Its featured story about the Kahekili Highway widening project stretched across the front of the “Local” section, complete with a large color photo filling the page above the fold. The problem was that the story reported a totally incorrect description of the stretch of road involved.
The Department of Transportation’s has announced upcoming public hearings on the proposed Kahekili project.
The agency wants to know whether construction is needed for the two-lane thoroughfare from Haiku Road to Likelike Highway.
Of course, anyone who has driven on Kahekili would immediately recognize that the stretch from Haiku Road to Likelike was previously widened to at least six lanes. Kahekili reverts to two lanes between Haiku Road and the intersection with Kamehameha Highway at the Hygienic Store in Kahaluu.
There’s even a reality distortion field surrounding that large photograph. The picture shows a large six-lane highway with cars flowing in both directions, while the caption describes it as “the two-lane Kahekili Highway.”
It’s the kind of thing that likely stems from a reporter writing a story based largely on a state press release and without visiting the area, where the error would have become apparent.
How embarrassing!
By the way, I’m with those opposing the widening of the highway. Those plans date back to an era where developers envisioned Waiahole and Waikane valleys turning into a new Hawaii Kai, with large-scale urbanization spreading to other areas throughout Koolauloa. Instead, the city’s general plan went in a different direction and has generally defined the area as one of very slow growth, designed to protect its more rural character. “Highway widening” is a thinly-guised pitch for infrastructure to support increased urban and suburban development throughout the region. We don’t need it or want it.
Let’s see. A couple of other Star-Advertiser stories got my goat in the past few days.
There was Sunday’s story on the new law regulating nonjudicial foreclosures. The Star-Advertiser headline appeared to give away its editorial position: “New Law Flounders. Critics of Act 48 say the legislation hurts, rather than helps, the struggling housing market.”
If your goal is to speed the foreclosure process, then the law could be seen as hurting. However, anyone who has followed the news of the past several years should be aware that the bigger problem has been the abuse of the nonjudicial foreclosure process, with published foreclosure notices–could the print be any smaller?–replacing personal service, and many homeowners getting little notice and precious little time to respond before their homes were taken in private, unregulated sales. Often it was mainland lenders, with no local representative, who relied on the nonjudicial process, leaving borrowers trying to get information through distant corporate voicemail systems to forestall the loss of their homes.
But you wouldn’t know about there was a track record of such abuses from Sunday’s S-A story, which was written pretty much from a lender’s point of view.
It wasn’t until the very end of the story that readers learned that the law has apparently pushed lenders to “avoid foreclosures through loan modifications, short sales and accepting deeds in lieu of foreclosure,” all on a voluntary basis but against the backdrop of the state’s highly regulated alternative. If you’re concerned about homeowners’ rights, this would have been very good news.
Then there was Lee Catterall’s story–essentially a lengthy editorial–looking at Gov. Abercrombie’s emergency proclamation to facilitate ordnance cleanup of former military sites.
It hits on a pet peeve of mine, reporting that substitutes contrasting opinions of opposing sources with any attempt to look at the underlying laws or facts.
Buried in Catterall’s story is a significant comment from former State Sen. Gary Hooser, now director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control. Hooser said there was already a process for dealing with emergency situations like this without the governor’s controversial emergency declaration. But Hooser’s comments appear as simply one piece of the “he said, she said” reporting.
It bugs me because I previously tracked down correspondence between OEQC and the state land board documenting this option. Grounding Hooser’s quote with those documents, or a citation to the statute that clearly sets up the process for dealing with these emergencies, would have taken it out of the “he said-she said” realm and provided readers with a more substantive, and less relative, understanding of the situation.
Okay. Now I can go read today’s news.
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Since most newspapers have so many layers of people involved in producing the paper it is amazing to see a mistake of this magnitude. The story itself, the photo, the locater map were all wrong. I don’t understand how the reporter, the photographer, the artist, plus all the editors could not see the problem.
But the kind of people who read the Star Advertiser, with the exception of former journalists like Ian Lind, probably would not notice the blatant mistake either.
It also helps to know that most people who work at the Star Advertiser are University of Hawaii graduates. UH is basically High School 2.0.
EZ enough to do when there is no need for quality control, including from the bureaucrats.
When is this meeting? Was it yesterday? That’s how the city and Advertiser work – not much notice.
I also meant to say that it means no sense with this widening except to spend money.
The widening will only create bottle-neck traffic at both ends. It’s just like the bridges they widen along the Ko’olauloa area. After years, yes years, of tearing down solid bridges and putting up temporary alternate bridges and putting in new bridges, I don’t see too much improvement. Who wins? The contractors.
You missed this one from today: “Abercrombie accepts blame for mistakes.” But, if your read on, you find that one of his “mistakes” was not blaming Lingle enough.
When he said he “plays all four quarters” I thought he meant the Wheel of Fortune at the Nugget in Vegas.
I guess it’s fair and accurate to assert that the Star Bull has been a study of decline over the last few years.
Another example of decay: the pic of a mean ol’ *itch on the top left of the front page – or are they in keeping with the Halloween season?
The Advertiser is no Star.
Seriously, since when do editorial writers (Lee Catterall) write also do news reporting? Was that piece just the groundwork for an editorial to follow, an editorial that won’t be based on actual fact gathering any more than the “news story”? An editorial news piece is not a news piece; an editorial not based on fact is not an editorial. The S-A doesn’t seem to know the difference.
I saw the same photo and story about Kahekili yesterday and was as shocked as you were, Ian, especially since I live just a few blocks from there. I’m glad other people saw the same thing.
So the writer got it wrong, no copy editor caught the mistake, and no editor caught the mistake in the photo either. Sheesh.
Concerned about the road widening too. Main reason for the paper delivery is that it comes with a poop bag for Alice Brown!
On the road story follow up today Park says yesterday’s massive mistakes were simply “incorrectly stated” and the map “displayed incorrect information.” If this is how they view this event then how can you believe anything else they publish is “correct” in the future?
There are examples of these errors EVERY day. Headlines/sub-headlines that don’t match the story, photo captions that don’t match the photo OR the story, and just plain factual errors.
Especially notable was one this summer in one of those editorial section “Off the News” pieces. It was talking about the ongoing relief efforts for the “April” earthquake/tsunami in Japan . . . . . except that it happened in March, March 11 in particular. Must have made a real impression on the S-A higher-ups, huh?
Sorry, S-A but stuff like this reduces your credibility to zilch. If you can’t get the little stuff right, why should we think you got the big stuff right?
I called the Star-Advertiser”s City Desk yesterday morning around 8 am to file a complaint about the misinformation in the story
The meetings will be held on Wednesday, November 2, and Tuesday, November 8, from 5 pm until 9 pm at Windward Community College’s in Hale Akoakoa. I confirmed the dates with the State Depoartment of Transportation earlier this morning.
With respect to an earlier post about the trip to Washington, D.C and Denver, the Council created a Permitted Interaction Group to allow Councilmembers to talk about transit issues outside of regularly-posted meetings. If anyone wants to see the content of the resolution, then check with the City Clerk;s office for details.
At the time, I was susrprised that it was necessary to pass a resolution to allow them to talk to each other, but now it’s obvious that there are people who have serious concerns about elected officials doing just this.
The Star-Advertiser’s credibility has been on a slippery slope since Day 1. Some major corrections nearly every day, and those are just the ones that are reported to the paper. As others have expressed, there seems to be a lack of accountability for stories once they leave the reporters’ hands. Maybe, with only one major daily now, they just don’t care. Too bad.
Dear OHIAforest/Craig
Ok, really…?? EVERY day mistakes?? C’mon, ok I’ll bite. So what was wrong today? What was wrong last Friday? How about Thursday? All this drama. It’s a daily paper with work performed by human beings. There will be mistakes at times. Granted, the Kahekili story was not well done but what about the dozens and dozens of other stories in the paper the last week or so? All filled with incorrect facts? Don’t think so. It’s just not fun pointing out stories done well or written without an error. On Monday morning, from the safe cushy spot on the sofa the Quarterback in all of us comes out and we all point out the plays not made because that’s more fun than talking at length about all the plays that worked. Pile on all you want but all of you read the SA everyday no matter how much you like to say you don’t. Every paper in the country runs corrections on a daily basis. It’s the way it is. Ever watched a tv newscast with the wrong film running?? Wrong camera angles? All mistakes. They happen.
Yeah, editorial opinion disguised as hard news isn’t technically a “mistake.”
Whatevers: Sorry, I’ll back off a little. Shouldn’t have used the word “major.” But, trust me there are more sloppy mistakes (One on Saturday, two on Sunday that were never corrected — just three factual errors that should have been caught by an editor) that are formally corrected. Still, as you say, we are all humans — subject to the demands of our job, and in your case … working on a deadline. I just find it frustrating every time I read stories with errors in them.
How do you feel when you read stories that are accurate? Or those that you simply agree with?
As I said, “Whatevers,” if the S-A can’t get the little stuff right — or doesn’t deem it important enuf to do so — why should we give credence to its reporting/opinions on the big stuff? And are you as quick to defend public employees and others who earn the scorn of the S-A for their everyday human mistakes?
Putting that aside. one reason these errors rankle me — and, yes, I do see them every day (proof reading is part of my day job) — is that the S-A is constantly crowing about itself (the story the paper did on its one year anniversary was particularly self-laudatory). It’s also putting all sorts of money into fluff (HILux anybody?) while at the same time denying its own mistakes or — perhaps more prevalently — “quality issues”.
If the S-A wasn’t trying to pass itself off as the second coming of I don’t know what, imposing its paywall, acting anti-competitively, etc., I would be much more forgiving of its humanity. It glories in sniggering commentary about others’ manini faults — try read the Volcanic A$$ David Shapiro or the petty, embittered “Dick” Borreca — so it should be prepared to hear the same in response. So should you. The hypocrisy is palpable.
In the meantime, yes, I will continue reading it because it is the only “traditional” paper left and that still means something to this oldf fart.
I haven’t missed anything since I stopped reading SA. Now if Civil Beat would add a Bridge Column and Doonesbury, I would be set!
I can just see and hear the defensive tempers flaring over these critical comments! (regardless of how accurate they are.)
Whatevers-I agree with you in that mistakes happen some of the times and are often unavoidable and not always that significant. But the Kahekili story was a total meltdown. I worked many years at the Advertiser and find this story with it’s problems just totally unacceptable and extremely unprofessional. The entire staff should be embarrased.