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I've received surprisingly little in the way of reactions to this week's announcement of new investors signing on with the Star-Bulletin. Perhaps the key target audience is potential advertisers. I doubt whether the average newspaper reader cares much one way or the other, but Advertisers want stability and predictability, and that's the promise held out by the new financial backing.The investor announcement was picked up by Jim Romenesko's MediaNews, which links back to the Star-Bulletin story.
A new edition of the Investigative Reporter's Handbook is now available from the online bookstore of Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE). This book is a classic, updated with new sources and examples. It's always fun just to pick it up, read a chapter, and quickly brainstorm potential local stories using the suggested perspectives and approaches. The general state of reporting would probably be improved if there were as many copies of this floating around as there are of The Chain Gang.
This was the sunrise yesterday in Kaaawa. What a way to start the day! I posted it and a few others in a mini-gallery update. Enjoy.
I'm due to be rescued from bachelor mode this afternoon when Meda arrives back from a week at Ohio State University. Not a moment too soon! Except it means that I've got to get things around the house looking like they were cleaned up daily. If anything looks like that wasn't the case, well, I'm blaming it on the cats. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
The smoke is clearing following yesterday's announcement of a significant round of new investment in the Star-Bulletin.The move certainly sweeps away a layer of survival anxieties and immediately puts the Bulletin on a firmer footing. That should boost the business side by erasing doubts among clients, doubts that I'm sure Gannett has leveraged wherever possible. And it should boost newsroom morale.
One S-B staffer said "spirits here are the highest they've been since the new Star-Bulletin began making newspapers. As usual, Black has worked his magic on the crowd, and many people now believe we'll be around forever."
Another newsroom source mused: "It might be a bit early to judge the mood of the staff. At first glance, it would seem that having the support of solid members of the local investing community would assure the long-term future of the Star-Bulletin, and that the staff could stop worrying about surviving and focus fully on competing. But most staff members have been on an emotional roller coaster for three years, and in some cases, it might be difficult to let go of that roller-coaster feeling all at once. It could take time for everything to sink in. In any case, it was a brilliant move on the part of David Black and the investors, and it reaffirms that the Star-Bulletin is a part of Hawaii."
While introducing financial stability, though, the move also introduces a liberal dose of vested interests which have been absent from the Star-Bulletin's structure for decades. Rick Daysog's story yesterday was accompanied by a sobering profile of "the players". Imagine a chart showing these interlocking interests--a conspiracy theorist's playground.
There has already been a sense that David Black's management has been overly sensitive to advertisers' interests, adding a background layer of pressure on writers dealing with stories that have a critical bite, and moving the paper more towards a daily MidWeek than the old "we make waves" style. That was before this slice of the state's power elite agreed to put down their money and join the board of directors. Hopefully they'll understand that meddling with the news side would be the quickest way to deflate that newly restored staff confidence. But those political pressures can be subtle, and sometimes self-imposed when writers unconsciously anticipate management reactions to criticism of certain interests and tone it down in advance. It will be a while before we see how all this plays out.
[Alert: other media have been notified of a press conference at the Star-Bulletin today at 9 AM. This isn't an everyday affair, and there's was a bit of buzz last evening about it. Bulletin sources tell me they expect positive rather than negative news. There's a lot of confidence in the newsroom, and positive comments have been coming from management, so it will be very interesting to see what's up. Of course, they've been through the bad news routine before and are alert for the warning signs.]UPDATE: I had to read it first in the Advertiser, which beat the Star-Bulletin on its own story this morning. The Advertiser reported at 9:45 that four local investors have purchased a minority stake in the S-B from Canadian owner David Black. Ten minutes later, the Star-Bulletin posted Rick Daysog's story, which provides many more details about the deal and is available through a link on the main Starbulletin.com page.
And a further note: Burl Burlingame says that if I had checked his Newspaper War site, I would have gotten the S-B news "7 minutes or so" earlier.
The Star-Bulletin ran a nice story in its Sunday edition about someone on Maui who loans out dogs to pet-deprived visitors. I'm afraid that I missed the NY Times byline when I read it. There's a local story that went under our radar until a visitor gave it worldwide play, I guess. A regular reader pointed me to a great column from the Waco Tribune-Herald in reaction to the story. This is well worth a read. You're sure to get a few laughs out of it.
I have to apologize to the Star-Bulletin for yesterday's reference to PBN's story on the sale of KCCN-AM radio. Erika Engle had the story in the Bulletin's Tuesday edition, half a day before the PBN story was circulated.
There are several families here in Kaaawa who fish on more than a casual basis, but one stands out for the multiple generations and years of apprenticeship involved. They take this little boat out into all kinds of weather to set nets and then later gather them up again. We ran into them on a recent morning, and the expression of the passenger in the truck says it all. Click on the photo for a larger version.
To its credit, the Star-Bulletin ran a story yesterday reporting on the loss of the Hawaii Navy News contract to the Advertiser.
Advertiser spam ( and I don't mean the kind of cans) is appearing uninvited with a pitch about their "prize box" promotion.
As you know by now, no other daily newspaper in Hawai'i delivers contests quite like The Honolulu Advertiser.Now Hawai'i's Newspaper gives you a chance to win free stuff EVERY DAY!
Introducing The Honolulu Advertiser Prize Box. Every day we fill the Prize Box with exciting prizes such as gym memberships, rental cars, seat covers, meals and even Honolulu Advertiser gear.
Exciting prizes like...Advertiser "gear"?
Pacific Business News reported yesterday afternoon that PacificBasin Communication, which purchased Honolulu and Island Business magazines last year, has now scooped up KCCN-AM radio and is looking ahead to adding other broadcast stations. It's certainly an incredibly ambitious expansion program, with former reporter Floyd Takeuchi apparently holding it all together.
With Meda out of town, it's been hard to get into my normal cooking routine. After being reduced to leftovers for two nights running, last night I vowed to at least crawl up a step and whip up something, but I didn't feel much like eating. So it went like this. Spread the last of a pot of leftover rice onto a plate, sprinkle some water onto the rice, and then into the microwave to heat up. Then I sliced a good size onion and dropped it into a pan. As the onion started to cook, I added some raisins to sweeten, then some lemon juice as the onions browned. Then I almost lost it, sprinkling in a generous portion of powdered habanero, a prize find from It's Chili in Hawaii on South King Street. The problem was that as the habanero hit the steaming onions and the hot pan, it was aerosolized and became weaponized, unexpectedly potent. This will clear a room just as fast as cat pee on a hot burner. It took over five minutes and a small tree worth of Kleenex for me to recover enough to continue cooking. Final ingredients were a bit more lemon juice and an apple, chopped into pieces. Cooked up long enough for the apple to heat just a bit while retaining its crunch, then the whole hot mix went on top of the rice. Hot, sweet, and tart at the same time. An excellent veggie experiment.
Still no kittens. At least as of 6 p.m. yesterday.
The changing season seemed to demand a change in the main "title" photo, so I updated it to a mellow Spring photo of the same view, looking East from the beach at Kaaawa. Look carefully, and you can just make out Molokai and, perhaps, beyond.More comments came in yesterday regarding the Star-Bulletin's real estate section (Island Homes). Here's one:
Why bother with the Star-Bulletin home section when you can go to www.hicentral.com, get a better search engine, look through more data, and even get email alerts about property price changes?Newspapers have almost zero leverage right now in the real estate ads. In fact, some real estate boards in other parts of the country are asking papers to PAY THEM for listings, since the papers clearly need the listings more than the Realtors in many heavily wired cities.
And then this report:
My experience running an ad for an apartment to rent was that the Star-Bull ad cost $47 for a week which was a half-price deal. I rented it almost immediately and got around 15 calls. I simultaneously ran an ad in the Advertiser for $96, because someone told me that's what they used to do before the HNA agreement, but it didn't come out until the weekend by which time the apartment was rented. I got a lot of calls from the Advertiser ad too. So, the Star-Bulletin delivered the goods and I could have saved money by going with that paper alone. I guess I wasn't quite confident enough to use the Bulletin alone, but next time I'll start with it and then see how it plays out.I was treated courteously and professionally by both papers. The only thing that made me wonder was that the Advertiser first quoted me a figure of $780 for a month, which is way too much and too long for renting an apartment.
And now for something completely different. When UH football coach June Jones' wife filed for a legal separation in August 2001, saying that their marriage was "temporarily disrupted," the first response from the coach's lawyers was to try to block access to information about the case. The second move was to respond that "...the marriage is not temporarily disrupted but is irretrievably broken."
Just a week after Diane Jones' request for a separation, attorneys representing the coach filed a motion to require everything in the case to be sealed, meaning that it would not be available for public inspection.
"Disclosure of the documents could cause irreparable harm to the parties and their families and that due to the fact that Defendant is considered a public figure, it is in the best interest of the parties to seal the documents...to preserve the parties privacy, respectively," wrote Robert Ichikawa from the law firm of Kobayashi Sugita & Goda.
The request for secrecy was immediately denied by Judge Darryl Y.C Choy.
"You may wish to review the March 25, 1998 memorandum of the Senior Judge, which provides that no open files or documents in open files will be marked 'confidential' unless a motion for protective order is filed and granted pursuant to Rule 26(c) of the Hw. Fam. Ct. R.," Choy wrote.
Despite Choy's ruling, the court record doesn't contain any of the financial statements that are typically part of divorce proceedings, and Jones' overall compensation remains unreported. And there aren't any details to support or refute the "rumors" that have made the rounds about the coach's private relationships.
Diane Jones later withdrew her request for a separation and joined in asking for a decree of divorce. The matter is pending.
I took another look at the Star-Bulletin's Island Homes section yesterday after the reaction it drew from the competition last week. Right now, it is pretty thin on substance. There still aren't a lot of individual real estate listings in either the "for sale" or "for rent" categories. Realtors are being offered free "open house" listings, but that appears to still be a work in progress. And there's a promise of an expanded section on Starbulletin.com beginning April 19. Right now, it's just an empty gray box with a the Island Homes title across the top, but by the end of the week they're promising that it will include the Honolulu Board of Realtors complete Multiple Listing Service lists as well as some "exclusive" stories.Honestly, if I were looking for a place to live right now, I would have to look elsewhere for more listings. That probably means the Advertiser.
The trick for the Star-Bulletin is obviously going to be leveraging the new and admittedly useful database into something that's going to break through Gannett 's virtual lock on the market and attract a critical mass of paid advertising, and that means all those individual real estate listings as well as the company display ads. So far, this project is long on promise and short on execution, but with its official "launch date" still days away, the shape of the final product appears to be still evolving.
The Star-Bulletin has executed quite well on its weekend entertainment section and Sunday magazine insert, both of which have consistently been quite respectable. It's just not clear yet whether the real estate project is going to really deliver.
We were a bit surprised when we tried to chant through the dogs we've gotten to know on the route of our daily walk, many of which now expect a morning handout. There's Kolohe and Kila, sometimes Manu, then Buddy, Tiki, Max, Opu, George & Lucy, Axel, Malama, then a puppy whose name we don't know, Hina #1, Hina #2, Zeus, Maile, Hoku, Daisy and Kuulei, and then as we get back home, there's Betty, a.k.a. Sunshine, next door. That's twenty, 2-0, and there are several more who only make occasional appearances. That's nearly three times as many dogs as we have cats.
In any case, I posted a few more photos last night of the dogs. I hope that the cats of the household understand.
Okay, the country thing is getting out of control. There was a funny little noise in the room a couple of minutes ago. I thought a cat was playing with something. Then it happened again, prompting a check. It seems I had the screen door cracked open several inches, just enough for a cat to slink in or out without requiring me to play doorman. But this noise was a chicken, a "teenager" but definitely a chicken, who discovered the portal and strutted right in. What are you doing in here? Go out for God's sake and act like a chicken!
So it is true. The Advertiser received word this week that it won the contract to publish Hawaii Navy News. The decision essentially confirms an earlier decision that had been set aside following a protest by the Star-Bulletin.One question: Since the Star-Bulletin ran several stories about its successful protest, will it now follow through with a story on the final contract award? I know that folks at the other end of South Street are waiting to see.
Have you noticed that StarBulletin.com has a new feature up at the top of the main page? [Coming up] offers up a mini-list of what it refers to as headlines from the "next edition" of the paper. No stories, just headlines. But for most of the day, it's just a mechanism for sidestepping the issue of the delay in posting the same day's issue online, since StarBulletin.com is updated at the very end of the daily publishing cycle. So most stories that are in the print version available first thing in the morning can't be read online until late afternoon, nearly 12 hours later. This runs contrary to the Internet generation's demand for immediacy.
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