My Civil Beat column this week tried to simply describe what was in the Hawaii Supreme Court’s decision to void the permit previously approved by the Board of Land and Natural Resources allowing construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (“Ian Lind: What The Supreme Court’s TMT Decision Didn’t Say“).

I am surprised to see that the column is #1 in Civil Beat’s list of most popular current stories after being posted for over 24 hours. It was, in many respects, a very simple column to write. I read the court’s opinion signed by three justices, and the concurring opinion, which two justices signed on to in its entirety.

And then I just tried to summarize what was there, highlighting what I think are the important parts, and putting their relevance in context.

Nothing fancy, yet several readers commented that they felt it was very useful.

I think this is a reflection of the shallowness of the daily media’s treatment of things like this.

Back when I was reporting for the old Star-Bulletin, I resisted the prevailing journalism wisdom that advised against trying to provide too much detail about process because “no one is interested in that inside baseball” perspective.

So in reporting the latest court decision on TMT, the Star-Advertiser’s story followed the prevailing wisdom, and after a few sentences reporting the bottom line of the court’s decision (“The justices kicked the case back to the board for a new hearing”), the story went on to report reactions to the decision by those on both sides of the issue before coming back for more quotes from the decision.

Although court decisions like this are now readily and immediately available online, that obviously doesn’t mean that many people read them.

So it’s left to those of us kind of on the news margins to try to fill in the gaps, find ways to walk through the issues being dealt with, and try to show how and why the court’s action is relevant.

It’s different from the kind of reporting that chases “breaking” news through the 24-hour news cycle, but it clearly has its place.

By the way, if you haven’t considered subscribing to Civil Beat in a while, you might be interested to know that the subscription price has dropped substantially. Civil Beat now costs just $4.99 a month, jus under half the price of the Star-Advertiser, which currently charges Hawaii residents $10.42 per month for a digital subscription.