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March 29, 2003 - Saturday
Popular investment site Motley Fool says the NY Times is reporting "advertising weakness" due to the war in Iraq, and other newspaper companies are expected to face similar problems.
Two items of interest this week from the land of Gannett. Tom Curley, a veteran Gannetteer with 31 years service and current publisher of USA Today, was selected as the new president and CEO of Associated Press. I'm sure that rank and file AP'ers are excited by that news.
The company entered into a new partnership with MediaNews Group, combining several newspapers in Texas and New Mexico. The two newspaper companies, along with Stephens Media Group, formed a similar partnership in California several years ago. Do we call this approach "JOA lite"?
| It's been one of those weeks. The first "gift" was a small rat placed carefully under the desk where Meda drops her books and papers from campus. That was sometime Tuesday. I'm the official prey remover, and was immediately called to the scene when the victim was discovered.
Then there was a commotion around the cat door after we finished dinner on Wednesday night. Harry came bursting in through the door, tail puffed and eyes wide, and Ms. Wally went in the opposite direction, heading out into the darkness.
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I opened the door and looked out onto the deck. There was Wally surveying the source of the excitement--a good size country rate which had been dispatched and deposited just outside the door. From the sequence of events, I think Harry was the hunter, but can't be sure. In any case, at least some of our cats are on duty.
March 28, 2003 - Friday
The style difference between the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin was clearly displayed in yesterday's editions.
The S-B featured another huge wraparound photo extending across the front and back of the first section. It's too bad that Starbulletin.com doesn't have an image of the whole thing. But with all that real estate devoted to the giant photo, there's only room for part of a single news story (about 9 column inches) on the front page.
The Advertiser, on the other hand, presented a more conventional design: a large headline, above the fold photo, and five front page news stories, including two local stories.Quite a stark contrast.
Will reporters be eligible for overtime under the proposed new federal Labor Department regulations?
A Kansas City Star story which popped to the top of my Google search, reports that the new regs change the three tests (executive, administrative or professional duties) which determine whether employees are exempt.
The proposed "professional duties" test would exempt "learned professionals" who gain knowledge or skills through a combination of job experience, education and training. This test probably would remove overtime pay rights from some workers who now have them.
That sounds like reporters would now clearly be considered salaried and therefore exempt, although it sounds like a collective bargaining contract could still provide for overtime. I'm waiting to see what the Newspaper Guild has to say.
Here's an interesting BBC story on news coverage of Iraq in several Asian countries. And the Guardian has a good interview with weapons inspector Hans Blix. And Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, offers an insightful look at the Bush administrations "delusions of power."
| Here's another round of Kaaawa's morning dogs. These are visits with some of our favorites. Just click on the photo.
For the record, sometime earlier this month we completed our 7th year of regular pre-dawn walks in Kaaawa. We follow a route that's about 3 miles, and aim to get back home in an hour, although stopping for photos, gossiping with friends, and passing out dog treats along the way does slow us down.
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March 27, 2003 - Thursday
Big Island Circuit Court Judge Riki May Amano withdrew her request to be reappointed for another 10-year term and instead announced her retirement last week. In a written statement, Amano said she took the action only after the Judicial Selection Commission voted against her in a confidential ballot. This is quite unusual in Hawaii and should have prompted lots of questions.
A similar decision by Honolulu District Court Judge David Fong to withdraw his application for retention and retire drew no media attention, despite previous questions about his apparent failure to disclose his wife's financial ties to several hostess bars.
This time around, Advertiser neighbor island editor Christie Wilson did the best reporting on the move, which essentially removed Amano from her job. The Hawaii Tribune-Herald's Chris Loos added other details.
Wilson cited several factors, and noted: "Hilo attorney Brian DeLima said some civil attorneys may have been frustrated that their cases didn't move along as quickly as they would've liked, and were sometimes pushed back because of criminal cases."
One of those delayed cases, interestingly enough, was a civil suit against Eric Aaron Lighter. I described the background of that case in a 2001 story in the Star-Bulletin. It's the same story that Lighter cited in a lawsuit filed early this year against the S-B and myself. By the way, I've never been served in that case and, as attorneys tell me, "if you're not served, you're not sued."
According to files in the Hilo case:
Ronald Alan Ober vs. Eric Aaron Lighter, et. al., (Civil No. 99-217, 3rd Circuit) went to trial in Amano's courtroom on January 16, 2001. Ober alleged he had been defrauded of two Volcano properties. Both sides submitted proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law on February 16, and closing arguments took place on February 23, 2001.
On March 16, Amano made a verbal ruling that one property would be returned to Ober, and Lighter would have to pay Ober the value of the second property, with the amount to be determined later. Amano said a written ruling would be issued "some time next week," court documents show.
But nothing happened for six months. At that point, Ober's attorney filed an unusual motion, titled simply, "Motion for Entry of Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law," apparently a mechanism to remind Judge Amano of her missing ruling.
A hearing on that motion was held on November 14, 2001, and Amano granted the motion. At that time, according to a transcript of the proceedings, Amano said: "...hopefully by mid-December I'll have something, everything to be signed and filed."
But, again, months went by and Amano's paperwork remained missing in action.
On April 19, 2002, a full six-months after the last hearing in the case, Ober's attorney filed a Petition for Writ of Mandamus with the Hawaii Supreme Court, asking the court to order Amano to issue her final written ruling so that Ober could obtain his property and his money.
Amano submitted a signed declaration to the Supreme Court on July 17, 2002, stating that "approximately 10-12 hours" would be needed for her to finish up the original findings. On the basis of Amano's statement, the Supreme Court concluded on August 19, 2002, "the respondent judge is not refusing to act" and denied the petition for a writ of mandamus.
But again, despite Amano's declaration, the written findings weren't forthcoming by the end of 2002, a full two years since the trial had started.
My guess is that this was one case which undermined Amano's reappointment.
March 26, 2003 - Wednesday
Lloydslist.com reported yesterday that only American companies are being considered for contracts in Iraq.
USAID administrator Andrew Natsios was reported to have said last week that all awards would go to US companies because, among other things, "their personnel would need to have security clearances".
News came later that V.P Cheyney's firm, Halliburton, picked up the first $1 billion contract. Surprise?
| I spent Saturday baking bread. It was a way to ward off the bad news of war and devastation. Should I admit that? It worked, at least for a while. Please click on the photo for the full story.
I'll miss George Steele this morning because he would always be the first to respond to any entry dealing with food. I think he was a conceptual cook, willing to give recipes a good working over in his mind, although I have no idea if he ever took them into a kitchen.
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the bread is rising |
March 25, 2003 - Tuesday
Editor & Publisher takes a quick look this week at columnist Norman Solomon's criticism of the media's war coverage.
And the Wall Street Journal points out that the Arab Al-Jazeera network has set up its own fledgling English language Web site. All sides of this war, it seems, are making full use of the Internet.
Gannett Chairman Doug McCorkindale took home a $2.25 million bonus last year on top of his $1.6 million salary, it was reported last week. This while the company has been demanding rollbacks and cutbacks during union contract negotiations here. I can imagine that folks at the Advertiser are more than a little skeptical of the company's poor mouth claims.
Welcome to The Broken Zone. I can almost hear the narrator making the announcement.
It started last week when, in the middle of several tasks, my Palm (actually a HandEra 330) lost it's mind. Well, froze and left me with no option except to wipe out its memory and reinstall the last backup. All worked fine, except that certain applications didn't load and I haven't yet had time to go back and figure out how to do it right.
Then I volunteered to fix Meda's Blue & White Mac, which has been acting up. I thought it probably needed memory, but that didn't seem to have much effect. So I finally had to grab several diagnostic programs and go to work. Her Mac passed all the tests but still was having random crashes. Next stage--upgrade her closer to the modern world by moving her from version 8.6 to 9.2 of the Mac OS.
I turned to that job last Friday afternoon. By the end of the day her Mac was in shambles, unable to do much more than boo and crash. So much for my fixin'.
Then on Saturday our clothes dryer stopped working. Well, it is 13 years old, and when it was repaired four years ago we were told that it might need a new motor soon.
We lost a stack of dishes when a couple of cats went ballistic in the wrong place. That was also on Saturday. We've noticed these things are cyclical and tend to occur together, so now we're just waiting for the next thing to enter the zone.
Progress report: after reading an old hint about B&W Macs, yesterday I opened it up and rechecked everything plugged into the mother board. Sure enough, the main processor card was very slightly ajar, so as the computer built up heat it would warp just a bit and behave eraticallly. I popped it back into place, checked everything else, and then it ran flawlessly through several consecutive upgrades right through to 9.21. Maybe we're going to exit the Zone after only a short visit.
March 24, 2003 - Monday
The electricity went out again early this morning. Several blue flashes lit up the sky to announce its departure. Power came back on shortly after 5 a.m.
However, this page may not get posted in a timely fashion because our Roadrunner connection has been having problems all weekend. It's working only intermittently. But I'll go through the motions anyway. Positive thinking and such.
click for larger photo |
The Star-Bulletin gets credit for its dramatic graphic presentation in Saturday's edition, with a photo of the bombing of Bagdad that spanned the two pages. I actually didn't notice the whole spread until I looked across the room when Meda was reading that section. But it was a winner. |
| Ms. Harriet has been around the house a lot more over the past couple of weeks, so she appears in my latest set of Kaaawa cat photos. Just click on her picture to check it out. |
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March 23, 2003 - Sunday
Someone torched the French Cleaners in Modesto earlier this week, apparently to send an anti-French political message. No matter that the owner is Assyrian and left Lebanon for the U.S. in order to escape that country's civil violence. It's a sad comment on the state of the nation.
I've been bouncing around between Independent Media Center, the NY Times, and BBC News, for war updates. In that sense, the Star-Bulletin is probably right that most readers are going elsewhere for their international coverage and so there's no need to commit major resources to revamping Starbulletin.com to present redundant news.
| Here's another reason we don't like to see fishermen at Kaaawa beach. One of them apparently hooked this beautiful ray but failed to cut it loose, instead leaving it to die on the beach. It made us angry when we arrived at the scene in the morning. |
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