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I'm told that the new issue of Pacific Business News has a front page story on the next front in the newspaper war--web pages. But my PBN didn't get into the PO box yesterday morning, so I won't be able to say anything about the story until a visit to the post office later this a.m.I'm always intrigued when the "real" story is buried down inside another story, begging to be pursued. It happened again yesterday, with a story appearing on page A-4 of the morning Star-Bulletin. The story describes the Honolulu Liquor Commission's decision to revoke the liquor license of a Keeaumoku Street strip club after numerous violations, with testimony by police officers about services provide for a group of undercover officers posing as a "private party" in an upstairs room.
First point of interest. Michael Green, attorney for the police union, SHOPO, was there representing the club's owners. Green isn't one of the group of attorneys specializing in appearing before the liquor commission.
But down in paragraph twelve I tripped over this info.
"Club co-owner Yvonne Dang, whose son-in-law is a policeman, told the commission she normally rented the upstairs room out only to police officers for their private parties.[and at the end of the story:] "After the license revocation vote, Dang said, "I hope they (police) can find some place to make a party."
Sounds like one group of police officers were getting a rep for making whoopee upstairs at Golden Dolls Showgirls and finally got shut down by another group of officers acting in their official capacities. And shouldn't we be interesting in the apparently cozy relationship between the party cops and the owners of this club with it's record of violations of law. There's a story in this, for sure.
This bit of advice came from another cat person in response to yesterday's description of Leo's new attention-getting "trick":
We call that "cat hockey" in our house. And the verb is used thus: "He hockeyed that dish right off the counter!"There is a type of removable, reusable clay/putty (doesn't harden) that is marketed under the name "Stik-Tak" -- comes in little squares, like kneaded eraser, which you form into balls and then stick under stuff to keep it from sliding. I use it on the backs of framed art to keep air circulating behind, and keep them from tilting. It will keep anything from becoming a cat hockey puck.
If you really want to teach him to stay off counters, you can cover them for a few days with double stick tape. Cats hate that. But he obviously likes to be up high (a tree cat), and if he doesn't have other high places to go, he'll really get nuts.
We have friends whose cats aren't allowed on the counters. But that's about as close as we get to a "no counters" policy. Our free range cats have open access. They just aren't supposed to break things.
The sections are coming! I'm told that radio ads are announcing that the Star-Bulletin will have four daily sections beginning on Monday. Not a moment too soon.Robert McKinney, owner of the Santa Fe New Mexican and veteran of a successful battle against Gannett that provided the backdrop for Richard McCord's book, The Chain Gang, died Sunday. The New York Times wire moved an obituary yesterday, and the New Mexican has extended coverage of McKinney's life and career. According to its account:
McKinney owned The New Mexican until 1976, when he sold it to Gannett, the largest newspaper company in the country. He negotiated, however, a contract that kept him as editor and publisher.Two years later, he and Gannett managers clashed over the right to determine editorial positions and the right to hire and fire. McKinney sued for breach of contract and won in a long legal battle the right to buy back the paper. He reclaimed ownership in 1989, making The New Mexican one of about 250 daily newspapers in the country today under family ownership.
Unfortunately, I don't know how their system works and whether this link will continue to point to today's stories. If not, you'll hopefully be able to dig back to their coverage.
If it's not one thing, it's another. Mr. Leo has suddenly invented a new trick. If he wants a little attention--a few fresh kibbles added to his cat dish, for example--he'll jusk give it a few nudges and watch it crash to the floor and, of course, we come running. We've lost several cat dishes in the past week or so when they hit floor. At first, we tried banning him from the counters, a hopeless move, but now we just found him an unbreakable plastic food dish. Of course, this is only a partial solution since he has generalized a bit and will target other things left on counters. Hopefully it's just a passing phase that he'll grow out of quickly.
Spotted in yesterday's Star-Bulletin (page B-18): "Seeking distributors for Maui," the advertisement said. Kihei, upcountry, Wailuku. "Must recruit & motivate carriers." Sounds like they're going after home delivery subscriptions over there.And I'm wondering if a neighboring ad seeking an Internet sales consultant for "Hawaii's premiere Web site" indicates an expansion of StarBulletin.com or simply uses a Star-Bulletin return address as a convenience for another unnamed client.
Speaking of the premiere Web site, StarBulletin.com had 63,139 unique visitors during the week of June 12-18 who viewed a total of 1,688,348 pages. That is a very busy site!
Yesterday's jaunt into Lind genealogy brought several responses. From S-B columnist Dave Donnelly, this tidbit:
Interesting that Lind appears to be uncommon, while Lindbergh is not. By the way, are you aware that aviator Charles Lindbergh's parents changed their family name. The changed from Manson to Lindbergh. If they hadn't, the Spirit of St. Louis would have been piloted by Charles Manson."You can look it up," he exclaimed.
And then from my sister, who's living in Groveland, California:
FYI Lind is far more common a surname in Scandinavia than it is in Scotland. It has been a surprise to me to learn that many of the Scandinavian Lind families in America changed their surname to Lind -- sometimes because it was associated with their locality of origin, in other cases for no reason that I can see at first glance. Maybe it was just easier for WASP tongues to pronounce. Although I will confess I have not yet run across another Ian Lind.We DO have Lind relatives in eastern BC and western Alberta along the border with the US. These are even farther removed than the Hana [John] Lind family, but trace their lineage through the same group of farms in Scotland with which our grandfather's grandfather was linked. Small world.
Regarding her reference to "the Hana Lind family," we discovered within the last couple of years that the original John Lind who emigrated from Scotland and ended up in Hana was the first cousin of my grandfather, William Lind, who ended up in California. Both came from the same small community in Scotland. Neither family had been aware of the link previously.
And back here at home, the buddying continues between Leo & Lindsey, punctuated from time to time by renewed assertion of dominance.
That's Leo, the younger, in the foreground and Mr. Lindsey, senior male, curled up against the pillow.
The Star-Bulletin is still having problems getting its preprinted inserts delivered, if our Sunday experience is any indication. Our Sunday paper was delivered with a Long's ad. Friends in town say there were several others--JC Penney, Lex Brodie, and Daiei.A brief article on preprinted inserts found in a mailing to stockholders by the Tribune Company, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other papers, suggests that the Star-Bulletin's continuing problems could be a more serious concern than the casual newspaper reader might think.
"Preprint has grown 140 percent over the last 10 years, and is second only to classified in terms of ad revenue," according to John Wollney of the Chicago Tribune, quoted in the report.
Preprints account for 15-20 percent of ad sales at tribune newspapers, the report says.
The key factors: "Competition, market shares and the retail environment play a role in any newspaper's local strategy. But ad directors throughout Tribune agree on this: When it comes to preprint, superior customer service is a must, and a client's loyalty must be earned."
It sounds like solving the preprint problems needs to be a high priority for the Star-Bulletin, since the opportunity to cross-market with MidWeek should be a potential gold mine of advertising revenue.
On a wholly different note, I was looking for something else yesterday when I ran into...another Ian Lind. It's a first, for me at least. This Ian Lind lives in Smithers, located in the middle of British Columbia, Canada, between the towns of Prince Rupert and Prince George.
I immediately sent off an email and got a quick reply. Unlike my Lind ancestors, who came to the U.S. from Scotland, this Ian Lind's family is Norwegian:
My family is Norwegian and Scottish, with the Lind side being the Norwegian one. The name was changed from Pedersen, to Lind, when my great grandfather emigrated to the U.S., (Minnesota). The family eventually ended up on the B.C. coast.Very interesting, to me at least.
And another aside. The Star-Bulletin team now ranks #188 among all the medium-size companies participating in Seti@Home, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The S-B team has contributed 39.484 YEARS of computer processing time to this international experiment, which utilizes multiple personal computers during off hours to process huge amounts of data, one small piece at a time. According to the S-B team listing, I finally crawled into the top 10 with 8186 hours of CPU time.
Sorry for this morning's delay. RoadRunner was "down" and unavailable until after we got back from the walk.
We walked in rain ranging from mist to "good & wet" yesterday morning, and, with a forecast of continued rain and possible thunder storms, we worried about whether we would be able to get home at the end of the day.
But the storm changed course and the sun emerged. All we had to show for it was a couple of photos of the misty morning and soggy walking shoes awaiting us first thing this morning.
More on Diane Chang's win for column writing in this year's SPJ-Hawaii Chapter competition. She wasn't present at the dinner to accept the award, which instead was picked up by managing editor Frank Bridgewater. But no one from the Star-Bulletin got around to telling Diane, and she eventually learned of her win thirdhand on Sunday night. I'm told the award was mailed to her and not displayed in the newsroom with the other winners.S-B newsroom vignette, courtesy of newsroom sources: SPJ judges commented that writer Rick Daysog, who took the top award for investigative reporting, "should teach a course on how to turn complex paper trails into comprehensive, tell-all exposes...."
On Monday morning, a notice appeared on the bulletin board which read:
Please Sign UpTHE RICK DAYSOG SCHOOL
OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
The Please Sign Up was in a large font one could read from several feet away. but THE RICK DAYSOG SCHOOL OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM was in a small font. there were spaces for people to put their signatures.
Spontaneously, people started penning in names. The first one on the list was Jim Kelly (Advertiser exec editor), and the list continued to grow without comment, or so I'm told. More names appeared. sally apgar (former Advertiser investigative reporter), bob rees (of the Honolulu Weekly), and so on...yasmin anwar ... hunter s. thompson, bob woodward ... jeremy harris, milton holt, henry peters, and more. You get the picture.
It was late morning before Daysog wandered over to the bulletin board and a howl was heard across the newsroom.
For the 4th year in a row, the Star-Bulletin garnered more awards than Gannett's Honolulu Advertiser in the annual Excellence in Journalism competition sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists-Hawaii Chapter. Results were announced on Saturday night.Overall, the smaller S-B took the top awards in 9 categories, while the Advertiser led in 7. However, by my rough count, the Advertiser took more writing awards, while the S-B picked up several in design, layout and photography. The S-B won in several major news categories, including investigative reporting, spot news, and public service, but didn't even place in government reporting and lost out to the Advertiser in business reporting.
Former Star-Bulletin editorial page editor Diane Chang took top honors as a columnist, and the judges' comments added a measure of irony: "Chang's columns have a tough edge to them; They're evocative and polished. They're sentimental at times yet not mushy. Even as non-islanders, judges were caught up in her story-telling ability. Clearly, she's a strong voice for her readers and her community. They should feel lucky to have her."
Of course, they didn't "feel lucky to have her." Instead, the new management at the Star-Bulletin got rid of her. Poor judgement, or warped priorities. Who can tell? Good on ya, Diane!
All in all, the Advertiser improved its showing this year, but the S-B still more than held its own despite its special circumstances.
"That's four years in a row now, and even during the year when the S-B had an owner that wanted to kill it, poor morale, and everyone awaited its uncertain fate, the S-B still outdid them," a Bulletin staffer said in an overnight email.
Congratulations to both papers, and to all the winners.
We're getting a lesson in cat psychology. Since Buster died last September, Leo's been having a terrible time. He's been nervous, jumpy, and "acting out", peeing in strange places and on strange things (like us, literally). He acted alternately afraid and aggressive, was constantly doing naughty things when we were in the house. Your basic troubled kid. Well, cat.
Then came Lindsey, now the oldest male. Buster always picked on him and, all too frequently, would attack him at random times. Over time, Lindsey reacted by coming home for meals but spending most of his time next door or at the fringes of the yard. But now Lindsey's figured out he can come home, and he has. And, in turn, he started doing little dominance routines to put Leo in his place, charging him, chasing him, etc. It looked like these were contributing to Leo's nervousness, and we were worried.But in the last couple of weeks, Leo's behavior has changed dramatically. He's no angel yet, but he's no longer a nervous wreck. It appears that Lindsey has established himself as the dominant male and Leo, having learned the lesson and his place in the pecking order, is a happy guy again. Now they're palling around, even napping together on our bed. And Leo's "inappropriate behaviors", to be polite, have been dramatically reduced.
A very interesting process to observe, once we realized what was going on.
Meanwhile, we luckily sidestepped another adoption when neighbors found a kitten hiding under their house. It was the same day that Lizzie disappeared for nearly 24 hours. We fended off the first approach, but felt ourselves weakening as we worried about this kitten's fate. But when we asked about it several days later, the kitten had been rescued by its original family! Seems someone several blocks away had gotten a pair of new kittens, but left them in the care of a friend one day. The friend left a door open, the kittens wandered outside, and were promptly attacked by a dog. One was killed, and the other ran and ran and ran, all the way up the hill into our part of the neighborhood. But a "lost cat" poster at the post office united kitten and family, and saved us from #9.
Oh. The photo gallery's been updated.
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