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December 7, 2002 - Saturday
It's my father's 89th birthday--so, Happy Birthday!
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the media watchdog group known as FAIR, has issued an action alert regarding the FCC's threatened elimination of limits on corporate concentration of media ownership. They are recommending letters to the FCC and members of Congress.
According to FAIR:
Commercial broadcasting has gone through stunning negative changes in recent years, as deregulation and consolidation have shifted the balance of power to a small handful of companies with interests and investments spread across the media landscape. We now live in a world dominated by profit-driven media conglomerates more interested in delivering viewers to advertisers than in serving the needs of the public.
Dissenting political viewpoints are routinely marginalized in national mainstream media, and the interests and perspectives of women, people of color, labor, and lesbians, gays and bisexuals are consistently underrepresented. Across the country, broadcast public affairs programs that address local concerns are almost non-existent; many communities can't even expect any coverage of their local elections on TV.
Several readers commented on Alexa.com's ranking system. I'll share a couple:
Alexa ratings are determined by sampling from people who use the Alexa toolbar with their browser. It's kind of analogous to the Nielsen system for TV, except that anybody can use Alexa toolbars. Probably not as accurate as Nielsen ratings, but for internet it's the best we got.
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On Alexa, it's a heap of fun to play with, but obviously it's about as scientific as KHON/Oceanic's "digital cable poll" on the gubernatorial debate (which, in the words of Joe Moore, is to say "not at all"). The figures are not only limited to Alexa toolbar users (a number, I suspect, that's shrinking), but some of them make no sense.
December 6, 2002 - Friday
How about ol' Rupert Phillips, former owner of the Star-Bulletin, and his family? The Journal Newspapers Inc., the Phillips company which owns the chain of suburban papers in the Washington D.C. area, was sued this week by the National Labor Relations Board, according to an article in the Washington Post. It seems most employees at the company's two Maryland papers were fired just two weeks before they were set to vote on whether to be represented by The Newspaper Guild.
The company says its just a coincidence and not related to the upcoming union vote.
From Wisconsin's Capitol Times comes this tale featuring yet another claimant to the restored Hawaiian monarchy. In this case, though, the claimant is a mainland charlatan who has sold an anti-government fantasy through expensive workshops in communities across the country, including Hawaii.
John Flanagan's departure from the S-B became official yesterday morning with a front page story.
This is the year of RoboCat, a.k.a. FurReal, apparently one of the very hot selling techno toys of the season. What should cat people think about this strange phenomenon? Why not adopt a kitten? FurReal probably won't spew hairballs, or get into pissing wars with other cats, which I suppose might be seen as positives. But I'm sure kittens are more fun anyway.
More useless information--iLind.net ranks 2,070,874 among web sites tracked by Alexa.com, according to their web site, which I stumbled across yesterday morning. How am I supposed to feel about this? I really have no idea what or how they compile this ranking. Last night, they ranked the Star-Bulletin online edition at 11,207 and the Advertiser at 8,160.
December 5, 2002 - Thursday
Wild electrons running loose in Hawaii County? I missed it the first time around, but a sharp-eyed reader spotted this headline over the weekend in the Star-Bulletin's online list of "Stories you'll see in the next editions of the Star-Bulletin":
More rolling blackouts hit the Big Island
42 percent of Hawaii Electric Light Co.'s
customers loose electricity
Joe P. in Japan commented: "I hope the electricians get out their wrenches and tighten up the electricity on the Big Island soon..."
Also from the Star-Bulletin comes word that former publisher turned columnist John Flanagan is leaving, effective immediately. Circumstances unknown. Perhaps I'll hear more soon.
| It's been five weeks since we found Mr. Toby at the other end of the 4-acre empty lot next to our house.
He's developing just fine, thank you.
He quickly caught on about food, but the lessons on cleaning up after eating haven't soaked in yet. The gravy has. He's in that "food face" stage.
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December 4, 2002 - Wednesday
Several people called my attention to a Star-Bulletin story in which freshly inaugurated Gov. Lingle commented on "sunshine":
Finally, Lingle said she wants the state government to be more open.
Mentioning her new senior policy advisor, UH law professor Randy Roth, Lingle said she wants to create an "openness that hasn't existed before."
"Randy and I talked about OIP (Office of Information Practices, which interprets state open-record laws) and how we are going to improve it," Lingle said.
"I have a strong background as a journalist," said Lingle, who started a small newspaper on Molokai. "Journalists have a right to this information, and unless it is going to jeopardize a lawsuit that is going to hurt the taxpayers, give it to them.
"The whole idea is openness, opening the government up. ... I want a government that all people feel they have access to," she said.
It's a great attitude to start with, but the proof comes over the next four years. I can remember the first days of Cayetano's term as governor, when he also promised a more open administration, something that certainly never happened.
It will be most interesting to see who Lingle appoints to head OIP, which has floundered in recent years due to budget cuts and administrative uncertainty. OIP director Moya Gray has asked to be reappointed, but it's very hard to imagine Lingle bypassing any opportunity for patronage after this long campaign.
You should definitely stop by Burl Burlingame's Honolulu Newspaper War site for an update. Burl has quite a tale about Gannett's unreported conflict of interest on stadium noisemakers. He also reports that negotiations are going badly at the Hawaii Tribune Herald, where a strike is going to be difficult to avoid:
Donrey is demanding that they be allowed to subcontract all work to non-Guild freelancers, Donrey executives will take over Guild jobs, all job openings to be filled by non-Guild hires, will refuse to train Guild employees on new equipment, create arbitrary rules of conduct, change job descriptions on a whim, fire employees without notice or reason, eliminate severance pay, Donrey executives would determine if an employee was "under the influence" while ordering surprise drug testing, and -- without notice -- lay off employees at random.
"Drug testing" is a favorite tool of anti-worker corporations, as they suspend the worker pending the outcome of the test, and then claim there are privacy issues surrounding the drug-test results. It's kept secret, even from the suspended employee, and so there's no independent confirmation.
December 3, 2002 - Tuesday
The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the parent union of Hawaii's United Public Workers, is reportedly sending two officials our way to assess the situation in the aftermath of Gary Rodrigues' conviction. Better late than never.
Making the trip are AFSCME General Counsel Larry Weinberg and Lee Saunders, executive assistant to AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, according to sources close to the UPW situation.
Saunders ran AFSCME's District Council 37 in New York for three years while the unit was in trusteeship after local leadership was ousted as a result of a series of corruption. That trusteeship ended earlier this year.
Changing the subject...here's another look at concentration of media ownership which appeared recently in the New York Times.
| And I received a little update on the first of Lucy's puppies to be adopted. They all found new homes quickly, but this cutie was first out the door.
She's wonderful, her new family says, but "she is a MONSTER!!!!"
"Her name is Mai, aka Maiko, aka Mai-chan, aka Maiko-chan, aka Gizmo cause everyone says she looks like Gizmo from Gremlins."
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December 2, 2002 - Monday
Star-Bulletin illustrator Dave Swann gets my vote for the best football commentary of the weekend with his column on Alabama football.
Results of Saturday's special election for the 2nd Congressional District seat were reported by the Office of Elections at 2 p.m. Sunday. The Star-Bulletin had them online at 2:19, and the Advertiser followed a minute later.
But the Advertiser just had a two line report with the promise of "more details to come", while the brief Star-Bulletin story referred to the "2nd Congressinal district" in the first sentence and the misspelling was repeated again later in the story. That error was still in place this morning.
| The sun now appears to rise from behind the island of Molokai. Yesteday's sunrise included a brief green flash as the sun cleared the Molokai mountains. Winter island style. |
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December 1, 2002 - Sunday
It's winter in Kaaawa. Temperatures dropped below 70 degrees overnight, and there's been surf booming along our coast for days, washing debris up over the road on the other end of Kaaawa. These are the times that remind you why living right on the water wouldn't be such a great thing.
Yesterday morning's Honolulu Advertiser included a half-page ad on A–9 from the State Office of Elections, which at first glance looked appropriate on the day of a special election. On closer inspection, though, it was the text of constitutional amendments that had been on the ballot of the General Election back on November 5. Oops!
"Do the conflicts of interest of our highly concentrated media constitute a threat to democracy?" asked NY Times columnist Paul Krugman earlier this week. Worth reading.
| Hey, cat people. I've posted an update on October's kitten, now known as Toby. Just click on his picture to check it out. |
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