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Erica Engle's column in Friday's Star-Bulletin provided a bit more background on the appearance of advertising on the front page of Gannett's Honolulu Advertiser. S-B editors rejected a proposal to accept similar ads, the column reports, quoting Bulletin publisher John Flanagan.Gannett's decision to allow its newspapers to run ads on the front page was noted in this journal more than a year ago. I tracked down the reference this morning. There's a lot more background available via an Internet search. I tried Google and came up with several.
I've got a rough day ahead. The morning walk, beginning in about half an hour. Return to fresh coffee, breakfast. Then off to Marty McClain's auction in town. Back after lunch. If I'm lucky, nap. Then over to have dinner with friends (they're cooking).
And hopefully I'll be able to grab a bit of time to update the photo gallery for posting tomorrow. It's been a great week for cat photos. So check back tomorrow for a new batch.
Mr. Lindsey
One Star-Bulletin staffer had this comment about the appearance of front page advertising in yesterday's Honolulu Advertiser:"As bad as the A1 Advertiser ad looks, I'm willing to bet we will follow suit eventually - just another indicator of how making money overrides every other standard we might think we have. Depressing, eh?It was announced yesterday that the Star-Bulletin is looking for a new sports editor. According to a memo from managing editor Frank Bridgewater, sports editor Cindy Luis has decided to give up the post.
"One area where she has made great advances is in our coverage of prep sports. In honoring Cindy last weekend at its annual conference, the Hawaii Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association noted that the Star-Bulletin had led the way in reviving and expanding media coverage of high-school sports."Cindy says she's taking some time off to "get healthy", and will be back as a writer in September.
And here in Kaaawa, our cat crisis resolved itself happily.
It started Wednesday evening just after we got home, along about time to eat. The cats were restless. In self defense, I grabbed a stack of cat dishes, placed them next to the stack of cat food cans already on the counter. Grabbed a spoon. Prepared to launch, which involves putting empty dishes down on the floor, and then trying to quickly dole out portions of canned cat food at a pace fast enough to keep ahead of the ensuing chaos.
But as the first team got their snouts into the food dishes, I realized we were two cats short of a full feed. Lizzie wasn't around. Neither was Silverman, although I'd at least laid eyes on him soon after we arrived home.
Sleeping it off after
the gal's night out...
Long story short--Lizzie didn't respond to the clatter of cat dishes. She didn't come when I called from the deck, or when I made a quick pass through the yard. And she still hadn't appeared by the time we finished our own meal. That wouldn't normally cause problems, except that I couldn't remember seeing her anytime since we had gotten home. That is unusual. By now I was into major worry.And we've had a problem for several days with two dogs from the next street up towards the mountains running through the neighborhood. One is a pit bull puppy, the other a teenage (in dawg years) mutt. This after marauding dogs killed 8 kittens in Star-Bulletin reporter Paul Arnett's yard just a half block down towards Kam Highway a couple of weeks ago.
The other cats traipsed along behind me in various combinations as I wandered up the street and back in two different directions calling for Ms. Lizzie. No sign of the errant miss. I got my shoes on and went down into the vacant state land next door. 9 PM. Still no Lizzie. She hasn't had dinner. For our cats, a major sacrifice. I'm into major "No, I am not panicking" mode.
Ms. Lizzie finally responded to my call, casually trotting up the stairs to the front deck just after 5 AM yesterday, a bit skittish but otherwise apparently okay. I tried interrogating her, but she didn't reveal where she spent the night. After a couple of rounds of kitty kibbles, she sprawled out across the Star-Bulletin, and didn't move for nearly seven hours.
This morning at 4:35 AM Wally was standing attentively on top of the PowerMac tower, staring intently at the nearest window. On closer inspection, she was staring at the rat tail dangling over a louver in the nearest window. Seems one of the cats let a midsize rat escape and it was able to take refuge between the louvers and the screen. I went outside and took off the screen so this rat could make a run for it, at least one large cat in pursuit. I don't know if it got away this time. Perhaps it did.
"How cheesy is that?"That's the comment of an early morning correspondent who snagged an early copy of today's Honolulu Advertiser and spotted "the first front page advertisement along the bottom of A-1. The Ad? Domino's Pizza! 1 1/4" x 7 col.!"
"Take my word for it, a copy sits in my home now!," he says.
Meanwhile, we've got a cat family crisis in progress which I've got to attend to. More later.
I've heard thirdhand that the withdrawal of Advertiser job listings does reflect a Gannett hiring freeze now in place back at the old news building. Nothing more known at this time.Back at the Star-Bulletin, is appears that national advertising is beginning to appear. In fact, I'm told, there were several advertising inserts this past Sunday, including two different Sears inserts, along with Penny's and Radio Shack. The problem: None of those were included in the paper delivered to our home, and our neighbor says they weren't in the copy he bought Sunday morning down at the Seven-Eleven in Kaaawa. So the S-B sales staff are beginning to produce those national accounts, but once again there's a big glitch on the production/distribution side.
Meanwhile, I almost missed Sunday's column by Advertiser Executive Editor Jim Kelly extolling the virtues of an afternoon edition. "I believe a PM edition of The Advertiser is a natural for our community," Kelly writes.
I guess there's no such thing as a sense of shame, or even embarrassment, over in those Gannett management offices, so that they don't have to be bothered with all those claims filed in federal court by Gannett's attorneys, including sworn declarations by Gannett corporate officials, "proving" that an afternoon paper in Honolulu was an inevitable loser, a killer financial drain on Gannett's resources, and an unquestionable economic liability. Been there, done that, can't work, they swore repeatedly. Then there were the sanctimonious public comments by HNA officials about the hopelessness of that PM publication slot.
Now, suddenly, Kelly wakes up one morning and the world has changed completely. Maybe he was preoccupied with something else and wasn't reading the papers during those long months of legal wrangling, since all that pesky testimony disappears without a passing explanation or even a comment, and now Kelly happily writes that there are more than enough Advertiser readers who prefer an afternoon newspaper to justify Gannett's new PM edition. Kelly doesn't once mention that old "C" word (competition), or that other afternoon newspaper which, by all Gannett accounts, must be a mirage because it can't possibly exist.
I'm told Kelly's abrupt 180-degree turnaround brought laughter to the Star-Bulletin's newsroom.
More correctly, as one staffer wrote: "We all laughed 'till we almost wet our pants over that one."
Now you see it, and now you don't. All of the open positions at the Honolulu Advertiser have been pulled off of Gannett's central job listing. Some have been listed for months, since the Advertiser announced that it would be beefing up its staff to produce its new PM edition. Now someone's apparently pulled the plug on at least some of that planned expansion.Whether this signals a pull back from the expansion as originally planned remains to be seen.
In the meantime, the Star-Bulletin is still looking for a breakthrough in national advertising. If you wanted to check out the holiday weekend shopping scene, you couldn't find much info in Sunday's S-B. Those advertising inserts from the big retailers, from Sears to CompUSA, are still missing in action. This has to be hurting. Someone else pointed out to me that the lead time on these inserts is several months, so there could be something already in the pipeline. This is a situation that has to change if the Sunday edition is going to be competitive.
Did you notice the new addition at the top of the page? I've added a quick link to the dogs we meet every morning...yes, dawgs. I'm still missing a few photos, and it doesn't rise to the "equal time" standard, but at least it recognizes their place in the start of our days.
Ooops. My Mac choked this morning while uploading today's entry. Maybe it's not too sure about the cats. Who knows. But after a walk and a little fiddling, it's back and running.Another friend in the Star-Bulletin newsroom disputed yesterday's newsroom tale: "Just thought I would give you a different take on the whole "desk-gate" thing. In an unbelievable display of overblown reporting, the incident which was described to you was really a whole lot of nothing."
No desk drawers were dumped out and the noise wasn't nearly as disruptive as stated in the initial report, according to this source.
"I feel we should be focusing on bigger issues than our keyboard stands," he added.
The Star-Bulletin's weekend features left me feeling old. Both the weekend magazine, with its preview of weekend activities around town, and the new Sunday magazine, are pitching to the 20-somethings with a special appetite for beer & booze in public places. This is a pretty blatant move to create an attraction for younger readers, but it's a tradeoff which leaves the core readership on the sidelines. It would be very interesting to know if this really pays off in substantial new readers.
Today is Kamehameha Day, a state holiday in Hawaii, so the weekend is extended for most people. State and county offices will be closed. And the weather should be great, as it was over the weekend.
In hot weather, this becomes the house of zonked cats. Late in the afternoon they crawl out of their favorite sleeping spots and loiter closer to home. I caught Kili, Wally, and Miki on our back deck on Saturday evening. beginning to lobby for their daily bit of canned food.
Here's the Star-Bulletin tale of the week as described by a staffer from inside the S-B newsroom:Actually, the meanest problem [this week] occurred when workers showed up to install some very nice ergonomic keyboard trays in our desk tops. Problem was they were totally unsuitable, and when installed, required you to sit at least four to five feet away from your tiny iMac monitor, and clamped down over your knees like an amusement-park ride safety bar!The workers with their power drills were disrupting the work flow, and they were pulling out drawers and dumping them on desks (with these keyboard supports, you couldn't also have a drawer in your desk). Our recycled desks aren't made for computers, and retrofitting such devices are like putting Ferrari wheels on a Ford Taurus. But the worst part was that fifth floor [Star-Bulletin/MidWeek management] insisted that if you didn't want this torture device, you were ordered to sign a waiver absolving the company from liability in ANY future work-related injuries! A clearly illegal and stupid move, and the Guild advised folks not to sign anything.
Work halted, and some of the keyboard stands removed, when the ergonomic consultant actually saw them in place and was aghast. It was a disaster. Even Flanagan thought so. Management really wants them in, though, are now trying to figure out how to raise everyone's desk six inches so that you can get your knees underneath.
It that was the low point of the week, then things would appear to be improving at the new Star-Bulletin.
Another batch of photographs has been added to the photo gallery. Click on the gallery banner or on this photo to see more.
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Since November 2, 1999
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