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A friend at the Star-Bulletin had this to say about the Tyson tirade: "It's kinda lame to report a total complete publicity stunt that's been on CNN, Fox, ESPN. Not worth the effort, i feel."And this observation from Alex Salkever (HawaiiScoops):
Interesting thing to note. The Advertiser has already picked up a full page of personals in their section. The Weekly (Honolulu Weekly) struggled to do that for ages. And traditionally, alt weeklies have leaned heavily on those ads to make ends meet. Does not bode well for future of HW in terms of a viable operation if it cedes the fringe to the stodgy Advertiser.He's right. That is an interesting one. Gannett's trying their best to take business away from all other publications, large and small.
Here's another result of this week's storm. A pile of commercial fishing nets dumped from unknown ships that's been drifting and is now draped across a section of the beach at Kaaawa. It's too heavy to move, so it will sit there until a crew from the city or state finally gets around to bringing in the equipment to haul it away.
If you read the Washington Post, or another newspaper that picked up the Associated Press story by Tim Dahlberg, you might have noticed that rogue boxer Mike Tyson did a little misbehaving while training on Maui last week. He apparently got wound up in front of reporters and made some comments that prompted his public relations company to walk away from his business. According to Dahlberg:In one exchange, Tyson told a female television reporter he normally doesn't "do interviews with women unless I fornicate with them." In another, he said he wished reporters had children so he could kick them in the head or "stomp on their testicles so you could feel my pain because that's the pain I have waking up every day."Tyson takes the tough interview to new heights.
But the point is this. Did we read about Tyson's incredible outbursts in our local papers first? I don't think so, although this is another instance in which I would love to be wrong.
Back on the Star-Bulletin's decision to dump the ABC audit, I received this suggestion yesterday:
If I were a business reporter, I'd be wondering whether ABC has given ground on so many gray areas, especially for two decades with respect to USA TODAY, that ABC's figures have lost meaning. And if I were a business reporter, I'd be wondering if what the Star-Bulletin has chosen to do, to retain an independent auditor, could be part of a growing trend. Gannett is the print media corporation with money. As the saying goes, "Follow the money." That can be interpreted two ways. One follows the money to find the story. And one follows the money to make bucks. Which one has ABC been doing? That's the story I want to read.On the kitten front, they're still without distinguishable personalities, and don't do more than eat and sleep. Their colors continue to slowly develop. One now has a little brown nose. I'm told the feet start getting color soon, although I haven't noted any yet. And nobody told us that kittens twitch as they sleep. It looks so strange and unsettling, digging at my underlying anxiety until I looked for more info and found a web site which said this is normal. Whew. Here are a few photos taken yesterday.
In what could be a very smart marketing move, Gannett's Honolulu Advertiser is now being sold in Las Vegas. What's more, the Advertiser is sponsoring a 3-day expo this week at Boyd Gaming Corporation's Stardust Casino, with the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, Aloha Airlines, and a few other local businesses also picking up part of the tab.According to an Associated Press story carried in today's Advertiser, Governor Cayetano is attending in Las Vegas to attend the event.
There are 85,000 former Hawaii residents living in Las Vegas, the AP reports. Gannett owns the Reno Gazette-Journal, and is a partner in Hawaii.com with Stephens Media Group, owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, ties which are surely being exploited to distribute the Hawaii paper in Vegas. A Stephens' partnership was also a major investor in Liberty Newspapers, which bought the Star-Bulletin and a place in the Honolulu JOA from Gannett in 1993, and sold to David Black last year.
It's an interesting expansion in a different direction that could eventually add several thousand daily sales to the Advertiser's circulation numbers, a marketing move that adds a new dimension in potential ad sales, and an interesting constellation of interests.
Anna B., writing from Edmonton, provides a verbal glimpse at a different kind of morning experience:
The prairies here have a different kind of beauty. I drive through farm lands on the way to work each morning. I could take another faster route to work but this drive often gives me glimpses of deer, coyote, raven, rabbits, hawks and magpies. Then there are the wheat fields, white deserts in winter, shy greens in spring, then summer! I often think the reason I don't miss the ocean so much is because the fields give that same effect of carrying your eye to the horizon with movement. Sunrise on a February morning is spectacular. Some days there are Sun Dogs. Ice crystals in the air reflect the sun and give the appearance of guardians on either side of it.
Hawaii Cows may be history, but there's a new site in town that's breaking new ground. HawaiiScoops is the effort of Alex Salkever, whose day job is technology editor for BusinessWeek Online. He comments:This is a work in progress.I am going to try to do it a couple of times a week. More to get my voice out there as much as anything. It won't be the type of in depth reporting you do but it will be a running dialogue so if people/aggrieved parties think something I have written is an error, I will post their comment try to look into it myself. Also, I am going to transition this to a real-live Website as soon as I get the time to build a page and learn how to use Moveable Type.
Dan Nakaso has a story in today's Advertiser on the Bay Area probes into the actions of the Hawaii law firm representing Genshiro Kawamoto. It's one of those stories that broke on the mainland and took days to finally break out here. The original SF Chronicle story was mentioned here last Saturday. (My spell checker just tried to replace Nakaso with "nachos". Very creative.)
It's certainly been a wet week, and it left its mark on Kaaawa. When we got to the far end of the beach yesterday morning, we came to this wide river instead of the trickling stream that usually flows to the ocean. The water was running dark brown with mud and contaminates, and debris covered the beach for a half-mile behind us.
The most amazing thing to see was the series of old wooden pilings that at one time apparently supported piers. These had been completely covered with sand the day before, so they stand as a measure of how much sand was swept away by the rising waters. It's been years since this many of them have been exposed.
I added some photos taken yesterday to Cybelle's Saga for the feline fans. Just click on Cybelle's banner at the top of the page. I'll try to post updates every few days, since a few days can be a long time in a kitten's early life and development.
A reader noted a contradiction in yesterday's quote by volleyball coach Mike Wilton on favoritism and insider hiring.She observed: "Excuse me but last year Mike Wilton Sr. hired his son Mike Wilton Jr as assistant coach....the same son he coached for four years at UH not very long ago."
Actually, I'm told that it was another son, Aaron, who signed on as an assistant, not Mike Jr. And with the lousy salaries, it might be close to a volunteer position. But perhaps it all shows that there's sometimes a positive spin to rising through the ranks.
Speaking of Wilton, the Advertiser's Stephen Tsai got close to a key issue in a story this morning on the possibility that the UH coach will be hired away by Brigham Young University.
Wilton, who was without a contract at the time (in January), told BYU officials he would not discuss any other job situation until the end of the season. Since then, he received a UH contract that expires Aug. 15, a week shy of the 10th anniversary of the day he was hired as UH's head coach.Wilton has sought multi-year contracts since his three-year deal expired in May 2000. Instead, he received retroactive one-year contracts.
The contract issue is dropped there, but isn't anybody else curious about why the first coach to bring back a national title in any men's sport has been working without a contract or under short term contracts that expire before the next academic year? What's going on there? Somebody needs to dig up the real story. I'll be eager to read it, although I'm sure the athletic department doesn't share my enthusiasm.
Speaking of missing points, I have to pick on the Star-Bulletin's account by writer John Berger of a high school talent contest.
We were reading the Star-Bulletin yesterday morning. Meda put down her coffee cup and looked over. "What did she do?"
Meda was staring at Berger's story accompanied by large photographs.
"What did she do? What was her talent? Did she sing? Dance? It doesn't say."
She could tell that I was skeptical, so she started reading aloud. "A star debuted, and Hawaii took notice, as charismatic Kim Anderson took top honors in the inaugural Star Quest High School Talent Search."
She read until the end of the story, and we still don't know what talents were displayed by the winner, Kim Anderson. We know a lot about the runner-ups and their acts, but somehow Ms. Anderson got lost in the glitter.
Did you notice the new banner at the top of the page? Cybelle & kittens. It links to an account of this whole rescue/kitten experience. I just got the first bit done yesterday. I'll try to bring it up to date with photos of the kittens' progress later today.
The UH volleyball victory reminded me of what coach Mike Wilton had to say about the Athletic Department administration during an interview for my 1997 series, The Money Game:Men's volleyball coach Mike Wilton blames favoritism and insider hiring for the department's problems in marketing and promotion."There's an unbelievable incidence of people who start working here as students and get promoted to real responsible positions. My comparison is the royal families of Europe, where after years in inbreeding, you start producing imbeciles.
"As long as you're a good soldier, and not a wave maker, they're going to keep you around," Wilton said.
And speaking of Wilton's strained relations with athletic director Hugh Yoshida, there was this little vignette tucked away in a Star-Bulletin story on Saturday by Grace Wen:
Meanwhile, Dobelle doesn't claim to be a superstitious man, but he doesn't want athletic director Hugh Yoshida to be sitting at his right side during the NCAA championship match.Yoshida sat on Dobelle's right during one stretch of the match Thursday when the Warriors faltered and allowed Penn State to come back. The same thing happened in Dallas during the Rainbow basketball team's NCAA first-round game against Xavier. The Rainbows went stone cold from the field in the second half, coincidentally when Yoshida was sitting on Dobelle's right.
The UH president said he plans to sit next to the Wilton clan -- Ku'ulei, Mike Jr. and Melissa.
As yesterday's correspondent said, "there is justice" in Wilton's national title.
There was some good news at the Star-Bulletin last week. Burl Burlingame reported that "a portion" of the 11 percent salary cut taken last fall by newsroom staffers was restored last week.
Kitten report: On Sunday, day 6 for these kittens, the first bit of Siamese coloring started emerging. Click on this photo for a larger version, and you can see the dark markings beginning to show on their tiny little ears.
And I did find one online source which described the Siamese coloring as a recessive gene. It indicated that Ms. Cybelle would have to have been bred with another Siamese in order to account for all three kittens inheriting that coloring.
The mystery continues.
It went from cloudy yesterday morning to wet, windy and fairly miserable weather by late Sunday, and that's continued through the night. Right now there's not-too-distant thunder and lighting, and it sounds like it's heading this way. The increase in wet weather is being attributed to the emerging El Nino in this part of the Pacific. It's good news for our yard and plants, which surely appreciate the precipitation. The cats, who would much rather be outside than in, are a bit less appreciative.
Kaaawa, Hawaii
With the University of Hawaii's national title in men's volleyball, this comment received earlier in the week is most relevant:Sure makes me happy to see Mike Wilton take his team to the national championship game in Pennsylvania. Here's a guy who received no respect on campus from his A.D., yet was probably the most decent man coaching on campus. Yoshida (UH athletic director) didn't even show up at the team's post-season banquet last year, and you know he's let Wilton's contract lapse the past two years. Wouldn't give him a multiyear deal. Now Wilton has a chance to give UH its first national title in any men's sport. There is justice.And I came across another previous message from a retired editor that gained in relevance with the Star-Bulletin's decision to dump the ABC audit.
ABC is not always a reliable source of circulation figures. When ABC tried to discount the free/bulk deliveries of USA Today, Gannett threatened to pull out all its newspapers, which would have financially crippled ABC. So ABC changed the way it counted circulation, to benefit USA Today.Sold on eBay yesterday: a Honolulu Star-Bulletin extra dated December 7, 1941, which went for $100. And a December 8, 1941 edition, which sold for $122.50.
Noted: Honolulu Advertiser editor Saundra Keyes was awarded one of Gannett's prized Presidential Rings. Here's the commentary from Gannett's web site:
Saundra Keyes took on the challenge of making improvements to The Honolulu Advertiser as the new editor at the same time the Joint Operating Agreement with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin ended and that newspaper moved to a new owner and a separate business operation. The newspaper tackled major breaking local and national stories effectively. Her success was confirmed in research that showed progress in virtually every measurable area. Said the judges: "Saundra Keyes did a marvelous job of strengthening the newspaper in a relatively short time &endash; and the result was greater readership and satisfaction. It was tremendous work."And on the feline front, we moved Cybelle and her kittens home to Kaaawa early yesterday morning, foregoing our walk in order to clean the room and get an early start for town. She was surprisingly oblivious to the new surroundings. As soon as she saw that her kittens were there with her, all was well. The kittens continue to just suck and sleep. I struggled yesterday to get the two medicines into the one kitten's eyes, but managed to get the job done.
I have a few more photos of cats and kittens which just got posted to a new photo gallery. The kittens are only six days old. Next week they'll probably begin to offer up better poses.
Ms. Cybelle & kittens
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