Brett Oppegaard, Civil Beat’s “reader rep,” jumped into the Hawaii Kai tree lighting issue with a column focusing primarily on media coverage of the matter (“Reader Rep: Hawaii Kai Tree-Lighting Shenanigans Continue“).

Oppegaard had contacted me to ask how I felt about being first on a story like this, and watching other media then enter the fray without acknowledging my version. He seemed bothered by the practice.

Here’s what I had to say.

Lind, a former Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter, has been blogging about Hawaii politics, media “and more” for roughly the past decade, in addition to writing for Civil Beat, but before all of that, he published a small newsletter about money and politics in the state.

From those experiences, he said, he has become quite familiar with the “news food chain,” in which journalists at small publications dig around in the muck and find and publish a worthwhile story, only to have bigger media companies swoop in, snatch up the story and repackage it as their own, sometimes giving credit to the originator but mostly not. Just about every national news story outside of the biggest media cities — such as Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles — originates in such a big-fish-eats-little-fish way.

Lind said he appreciates credit from other journalists, when due, but doesn’t expect it or worry about it any more.

“People who read my columns or my blog know that I developed a story that later gets picked up, and they appreciate being there first,” Lind wrote in an email. “And, hopefully, they’ll think that they got a little extra from the original, since I can often take more time and space than is available to mainstream reporters.”

Actually, I’ve been blogging since 2000, well over a decade. But Oppegaard accurately presented my view. The more media the better, as far as I’m concerned. I’m outside of the mainstream media, but it seems to me that any time there’s mainstream coverage of an issue I’ve been writing about, it just legitimizes my work. And when we’re all lucky, the story gets advanced.

Anyway, check out his take on the tree and the issues.