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October 9, 2004 - Saturday
After finishing yesterday's entry, I noticed that the Star-Bulletin story on its new investor didn't carry a byline and read like a happy press release.
It made me realize two things. First, how gutsy it was for the "old" Star-Bulletin to assign a good reporter to cover the then-ongoing efforts to save the newspaper from closure, despite the fact that those efforts ran contrary to the direct interests of its owner, who wanted to see his deal with Gannett go forward and collect his cash.
And, second, I realized how little we now know about the status of the Star-Bulletin. It's still publishing, but beyond that there has been virtually no significant reporting for more than a year. It's health, or lack thereof, is apparently an off-limits topic. What's happened to circulation? We read a lot about the circulation changes for a while, then that issue simply disappeared. Neither the S-B nor the Advertiser have reported on it in quite a while, although there must be data given to prospective advertisers. No hard questions are being asked of the S-B's management or of its local investors. We don't know the level or terms of those investments, whether they are token or significant. We don't know whether the salaries of S-B staff have been restored to contract levels after being "voluntarily" cut back when the paper was losing money in the post-9/11 period. Similarly, we don't know whether the Advertiser's expansion into the weekly and free classifieds market has been financially successful, or how it has impacted the Star-Bulletin. What about the new and mucho expensive Gannett printing plant? Are dire predictions about it's impact on the Star-Bulletin proving true or false? Same for the military newspapers. What was the impact of the Bulletin's loss of the contract to produce a Navy newspaper?
Despite the mantra repeated about the importance of remaining a two-newspaper city, reporting on this important sector of the community and economy has ceased. The Bulletin won't report on it and it's competition isn't reporting. Only PBN occasionally comes back to these issues, but recent reporting got stuck on construction of the Gannett printing plant and lost the big picture.
Funny how that lack of a byline triggered all this on a cool autumn morning in Kaaawa.
October 8, 2004 - Friday
The Star-Bulletin's front page headline yesterday unfortunately demonstrated a fundamental problem with the mainstream reporting of the presidential election.
"Bush plays more offense", said the S-B headline that ran over a syndicated New York Times story. The sports analogy that underlies so much political reporting is clear. Although it was the main headline on A1, it does not appear in the Star-Bulletin's online edition, which is mostly restricted to locally originated stories.
The original story that appeared yesterday in the New York Times, at least the online version, had this headline: "Stump speech retooled, Bush goes on attack."
Maybe I'm just overreacting to the overall reduction of vital policy issues into mini sound bites and sports imagery. This isn't really football, and we shouldn't be teaching people to think of it that way.
Also noted: the Star-Bulletin's announcement of another local investor, this time the family that owns C.S. Wo furniture stores, the state's largest furniture retailer.
Also on the political front, I notice that the Maui County Council "reluctantly" voted to eliminate its restrictions on political signs. A Maui News story captures the tension between constitutional issues that create a legal barrier to restrictions and community opinions, which see the ease with which campaign signs become unsightly nuisances.
The reopening of the renovated Kona Surf Hotel, now the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort & Spa, received a very positive write-up in the Los Angeles Times travel section. I always liked the Kona Surf, which got more than its fair share of government meetings before it was closed some four years ago. It will be a pleasure to see its current reincarnation.
Spotted in today's Seattle Times--a food review of a new L&L restaurant in the area, which credits L&L for perfecting "starch-fest locals know as the plate lunch":
Suspend all you thought you knew about cuisine, dear reader, for when you enter the color-splashed world of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, you have entered a distinct subculture in which sushi rolls come the size of your fist and Spam belongs in everything.
It's an interesting look at how the world sees us.
October 7, 2004 - Thursday
A sharp reader spotted the "Best of the Web Today" column from the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 4), which criticized a Democratic National Committee organized letter writing campaign following last week's first presidential debate, noting that it led to some newspapers receiving hundreds of similar letters modeled after a DNC sample. It's lower down in the column under the heading, "write early and often."
The column cites the Honolulu Advertiser as "one of at least three newspapers that published versions of the DNC's prefab letter."
It's happened here before. The last time around, it was the Star-Bulletin that fell for a Republican form letter, noted here back on January 22, 2003.
The Washington Post found recently that even giving away free newspapers to younger readers might not work to build readership, according to an excellent review by the free Washington City Paper. The story describes the results of Post focus group research, which clear reflect on the larger problems facing all newspapers. For many, online sources have simply displaced hard copy.
"The good news is they're extremely familiar with the paper. The bad news is that they don't want to buy it. News is like air, and we've taught them that," says a Post source who has watched focus groups.
It's another one of those stories that deserves to be read when you've got a bit of time to ponder the implications.
It's happened again. This time, two members of the Tennessee Board of Accountancy ran into hot water for accepting trips to a meeting in Hawaii paid for by a trade association which later landed a state contract via a subsidiary. The case has been making waves there in Tennessee. Every time another one of the scandals happens, it generates suspicion of Hawaii travel, encourages the general misperception that real business meetings can't take place here, and must send our convention center marketers diving for their Prozac, extra martinis, or bouts of deep breathing.
And then there's a bit of strange irony. Journal Newspapers, Inc., publisher of a string of suburban newspapers in the Maryland-D.C.-Northern Virginia region and once the publishing base of former Star-Bulletin owner Rupert Phillips, has been purchased by Philip F. Anschutz, the Denver billionaire who has also ended up owning the San Francisco Examiner. The Phillips-owned Star-Bulletin and the Examiner both faced imminent closure several years ago when the joint operating agreements they relied on were terminated. And both survived through federal pressure based on antitrust concerns and legal action by opponents of the closures.
October 6, 2004 - Wednesday
A story published by Salon.com a few days ago reports on an Army Reserve sergeant who wrote a piece for a Libertarian web site (which I earlier, and mistakenly, labeled conservative) with a very negative assessment of the situation in Iraq. He is now being threatened with charges of "disloyalty", a rarely prosecuted federal offense with a possible 20-year sentence. I guess that's one way for the Bush administration to try to hold the untenable situation together. Just imprison anyone who fails to toe the line. Scary.
The Toronto Star ran an excellent story a few days ago on the medical center in Germany where U.S. casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are flown for treatment. "It breaks your heart," the chief surgeon said about the flow of casualties, now running between 30 and 55 per day.
Those disloyal doctors will have to be checking their mail for warnings and threats from Ashcroft & Co.
Oh, my. Editor & Publisher notes that the latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll finds that the percent of Republicans who believe Saddam Husein was involved in the 9/11 attacks has climbed since June despite the 9/11 Commission report and other convincing evidence, including insider admissions. Perhaps they're like President Bush and only go into public when surrounded by the similarly deluded.
Those Republicans may not agree, but I think Jimmy Breslin's column today summed up yesterday's v-p debate.
Last week's Seymour Hersh interview is now available online at the web site of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Now I'm waiting for Monday's extraordinary interview with Bishop Desmond Tutu to make it to the web. Tutu was incredibly human, humble, and wise at the same time. If by some quirk it turns out God really exists, she might appear in just this sort of guise. And the interview happened on The Daily Show. Amazing. "Real" broadcast journalism should be as good.
| September came and went, leaving behind memories of some wet mornings and a few images worth sharing. Just click on this teaser for the September gallery from Kaaawa. |
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Time to grind the morning coffee and get out the door for our walk into dawn, so I'll leave the spell check and proofing for later. I'll apologize in advance for any flagrant errors.
October 5, 2004 - Tuesday
We've been reading a lot about Florida's election system, and now there's a way to test their new voting machines. Just click here and follow the instructions for a test run.
Thanks to Dan Nakaso for his front page story in Sunday's Honolulu Advertiser which takes a hard look at some of the unpleasant realities behind Hawaii's low employment rate
I couldn't help noticing that stories on the UH Board of Regents' contract for public relations services with a company headed by Rick Zwern popped up in both the Star-Bulletin and Pacific Business News last Friday, and in the Advertiser on Sunday.
The closely clustered stories without a clear triggering event leave the impression that someone was in the background peddling this story for their own purposes.
In my view, the reporting by the dailies skated the edge of fairness by raising the issue of conflict of interest on the part of Regent Kitty Lagareta without providing the reader crucial background information needed to evaluate the comments of those involved.
Neither of the dailies raised the conflict of interest allegation directly, and there's no indication of how the question arose. Both introduce it via denials, leaving an incorrect impression that it somehow spontaneously arose in conversation and sidestepping the matter of identifying the source of the allegation. Did reporters ask the question because an unidentified someone called it a conflict? It appears that way, but we as readers don't know.
For example, the Advertiser reports:
Lagareta, Board of Regents vice chairwoman, said there was no conflict of interest in the arrangement because Zwern's company, QSR-Pacific Inc., was hired by the law firm of McCorriston Miller Mukai and Mackinnon and not directly by the university.
The Star-Bulletin reported it this way:
Lagareta said that while she had a say in the hiring of Zwern, she did not make the final decision, and university lawyers agreed that there was no conflict of interest.
Both cite denials but fail to cite the applicable state law which defines a conflict of interest. That omission leaves the denials sounding hollow, almost encouraging readers to put them in the category of self-serving "the defendant insists he didn't do it" type of statements.
PBN avoided the problem by focusing on the question of the scope of services and never raising the issue of conflicts.
The conflict of interest question could have easily been settled with a quick reference to the applicable state ethics law, section 84-14, which is quite straight forward:
Conflicts of interests. (a) No employee shall take any official action directly affecting: (1) A business or other undertaking in which he has a substantial financial interest; or (2) A private undertaking in which he is engaged as legal counsel, advisor, consultant, representative, or other agency capacity.
It's clear that simply knowing someone or having had a business relationship a decade or more in the past does not create a conflict of interest. The stories should have clarified this point instead of essentially leaving it up to readers to decide whether they believed the quoted denials. Failing to do so did a disservice to Kitty Lagareta and the Board of Regents.
That said, the questions of what work was performed under the contract and whether details must be made public remain both outstanding and valid.
October 4, 2004 - Monday
You read it here first back on August 24, but the Advertiser used its Sunday edition to officially welcome Jeanne Mariani-Belding, who joins their staff today as editorial and opinion editor, a newly created position.
| Just a couple of days after matching front page photos, the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin did it again in their Sunday editions. Both ran versions of the same moment when one soldier waved a Hawaiian flag above his head. |
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This time the Advertiser's Eugene Tanner got the better photo with a better angle and a cleaner, less cluttered shot.
But I've got a serious question about reporting on the extended and highly choreographed departure of the 25th Infantry. It seems that both papers, and other local news media, have been tripped up by the "sacred cow" of military service.
Elsewhere in the same papers, national reporting on the presidential campaign makes clear that public questioning of the Iraq war is center stage in the hotly contested election, with large segments of this country uneasy with or openly opposed to current policy. With Kerry getting a big boost in the polls from his aggressive challenge to Bush in last week's presidential debate, shouldn't reporting of local events be finding ways to reflect those dynamics? Under the circumstances, the uncritical and simplistic flag waving/remember WWII coverage is incomplete at best, dangerous at worst.
No doubt it is a difficult and sensitive situation to report, but isn't that the job of professional journalists?
Along those lines, the Guardian has run several disturbing stories on U.S. treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay over the last several days that are worth reading through. Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor reports the Pentagon is working its spin machine to quash negative reports about the situation in Iraq.
| You just never know what you're going to see in Kaaawa. No, this isn't our back yard. These critters were out over the weekend on the other side of Kaaawa, where the Nozawa's keep the ark...or at least the ark's residents. We watched them, they watched us. They ate grass. We didn't. |
click for a closer view
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October 3, 2004 - Sunday
Last night was a bad one for the 6 p.m. news on Emmis' KGMB (channel 9). First their lead story came up without audio and had to be abandoned. But when they went to their second story, it was similarly afflicted. Somehow they managed to push ahead and make it through without those stories.
Thanks to Kevin Hughes for suggesting this music video, built around a wonderful time lapse drive from Los Angeles to New York. You can make the trip in five minutes or so. If you have trouble viewing that version (QuickTime), there are other formats available. Start at www.lacquersound.com, select your language, then click 'video'. Oh, you can click here for Kevin's latest gleanings on a variety of topics.
| It's been very depressing to have our front yard turned into a construction zone, filled with materials, debris, and the general chaos of a job site. Each time I expected things to improve, they didn't. So one day I assigned myself to tackle the scene head on, and proceeded to pick my way through it all with camera in hand. The result--some art among the chaos. Click on the photo, please. |
click, please
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