Tag Archives: Bob Jones

Two books by former Hawaii reporters

6 Replies

One just published, one coming soon…

“REPORTER” by Bob Jones is now available at Amazon.com and also will soon be an international e-book, according to its author.

It’s a memoir, something of a tell-all, and a studied look at the good and bad in American journalism. It’s my story of my time at various newspapers, local print and TV news and network foreign reporting.

It’s sprinkled from start to finish with insider stories about the Honolulu Advertiser, the Star-Bulletin and KGMB-TV, plus a lot about the St. Petersburg Times, the Overseas Weekly, the Louisville Courier-Journal and NBC News.

I’ve used real names. People many of you know or have read about. I rejected using pseudonyms. So the guilty and the innocent get equal billing!

People inside and outside of journalism and public relations will get an eyeful. Also the military, especially the 25th Infantry Division and the Kaneohe Marines. I’ve let it all hang out about the Vietnam War.

I have more than 50 years in journalism in the U.S., Vietnam, Laos, Germany, Spain, Nigeria, France, China, Japan, Korea and Saudi Arabia. I’m still in the game as a columnist for MidWeek, a 298,000 circulation newspaper in Hawaii.

I hope you will take the time to read it. What I have to say is germane to our democracy. You’ll understand much more about what you read in your newspapers or see on your local or network TV newscasts.

And, coming soon:

Aloha, Lady Blue: A Mystery by former reporter and award-winning columnist, Charley Memminger, is due out early in 2013, and is available now for pre-orders at Amazon.com.

Here’s what Charley had to say about it:

I’m stoked to announce that one of the best known TV personalities in the … ah … well … world – Pat Sajak – has written a cover blurb for my novel “Aloha, Lady Blue.” It’s an honor to have such a entertainment icon on the “Aloha, Lady Blue” team. Needless to say, my handlers at St. Martins Press are crazy happy about this. My great thanks to Hawaii KHON-TV News Anchor Joe Moore for introducing me to Mr. Sajak. Joe and Pat served together in Vietnam. When Joe’s not busy being Hawaii’s best known news anchor and Pat isn’t spinning the “Wheel of Fortune,” the pair dabble in acting. They recently appeared together as “The Odd Couple” in a run at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre.

We’ve been lucky enough to get blurbs of support from some incredible people, including Kinky Friedman (who has a new book out now with Billy Bob Thornton), Andre and Maria Jacquemetton, executive producers and head writers of the Emmy-winning TV show “Mad Men,” Frank South, producer and head writer of “Baywatch Hawaii,” noted futurist and author David Houle, and others. As a little (metaphysically speaking, not physically) unknown writer way out here in Hawaii, it’s humbling to get this kind of support. (We have blurb commitments from some other amazing nationally-known authors and hope to be able to announce them soon.)

Thursday Potpourri: Comments on the Star-Advertiser, the return of Poinography, Atomic Monkey, and more

18 Replies

Just a little mixed plate for this Thursday morning.

A friend and former islander, now living in the SF Bay Area, was in Honolulu for a few days and shared his initial assessment of the Star-Advertiser.

I was in town for a few days last week, and was disappointed at my first readings of the Star-Advertiser. Just one story on the front page? Promo upon promo, instead, which advertisers love, as it gets readers into the belly of the paper.

I was particularly appalled at the Today section, which is mostly fluff to begin with. Last Thursday (7/15), it featured a huge story on cataracts that was bought and written by an advertiser, Aesthetic Vision Center. No mention or disclaimer that this was an ad. The advertising department confirmed that this type of “placement opportunity” will become more prevalent due to advertiser demand and the changing focus of the paper.

And in Saturday’s Today section, there was not a single bylined story by a Star-Advertiser writer. Page 1 was filled with short, locally written blurbs, and then pages and pages of syndicated columns and content.

There seems to be a lack of general news gravitas in the paper. And an anti-intellectual mindset — every article, headline and op-ed piece seems dumbed down. And the writers are desperately searching for the local angle. It seems that if if doesn’t have the any or all of the words “ohana, keiki, kupuna, or aina” in it, then it’s not a worthy news story.

Interesting to see an outside perspective.

In the meantime, hold on to your hats! Poinography.com, one of the best of the local blogs, is back! Blogger Doug White also has a new scanner, OCR software, the latest version of WordPress, and, newly received, “all the incoming and outgoing communication and records related to the veto (or approval)” of bills from the 2009 legislative session. It took a year to get these records from the governor’s office, but hopefully we’ll reap the benefits shortly. Welcome back, Doug!

Bob Jones sent along this long comment:

Mufi Hannemann campaign “volunteer” Keith Rollman’s pitch is that his recent web site attack on governor candidate Neil Abercrombie was just personal blogging and not a studied hit with his boss’s blessing.

Absent evidence otherwise, we have to take his word. It’s just hard for us skeptically-inclined old-timers in journalism to accept that a man with a City job and a history of doing “opposition research” didn’t even ask some high Hannemann campaign official if it was okay to portray Abercrombie as a brain in a glass jar controlled by former Gov. Ben Cayetano, as a “flailing gasbag” and his wife, the scholar Nancie Caraway, as “a witch.”

Nothing illegal of course. It’s just hardball politics. Similar stuff to that churned out by Richard Nixon’s hitman Charles Colson. George H.W. Bush’s Roger Stone and George W. Bush’s Stephen Marks. They do the nasty attacks while the candidate says “I never authorized that.” And, as I said, maybe he didn’t. Campaign people do have a tendency to get out ahead of the candidate.

Rollman’s Atomic Monkey blog was his own registered site. He basically says “so what, it’s still a free speech country.” And that the Hannemann campaign PR people “expressed their concern that others might try to associate it with the Mayor so I took it down.” Of course, in this age of the internet, what Rollman posted already had gone viral in blogs and in the newspaper.

The legendary Stephen Marks in his “Confessions of a Political Hitman” laid out these strategies for winning:

(1) Digging up dirt on opponents works. Even if attacks are ridiculous or untrue, they work.

(2) If you’re caught, say you did it on your own without the candidate’s knowledge.

I’m guessing Rollman not only read but memorized the book.

And it’s just going to get nastier at least until the primary, perhaps beyond.

Now here’s one you just couldn’t make up, unless someone is channeling Hunter Thompson!

Would you believe an alleged extortion plot involving Mexican hit men hired by Wal-Mart, the Samoan mafia, an exotic dancer from Guam, her love child and a fearful farm family from Granite Falls, Minn.?

All that and a Pearl Harbor naval officer (and until recently commanding officer of the Military Sealift Command Office at PH) are in this Minneapolis Star Tribune story.

[text]And with at least some rain in the mornings for most of the past week, scenes like this have been more common. Don’t forget to click on the photo for a larger version. Enjoy!

Wednesday…Public input sought on historic preservaton (“sort of”), Bob Jones on search for chief, and reporting on Supreme Court nominee criticized

1 Reply

David Lawrence Brown, former Hawaii State Archaeologist/Branch Chief, emailed this notice which will be of interest to many:

I thought you might want to announce to your website readers and other interested parties that the Hawaii State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) is seeking public input for the Hawaii Preservation Plan.

What’s interesting is that the DLNR and SHPD have never actually notified “the public.” Instead, they decided to have the questionnaire hosted on the Historic Hawaii Foundation (HHF) website. I could speculate as to why DLNR/SHPD have not notified “the public” and have chosen to only have the questionnaire with HHF, but that’s another story.

The Preservation Plan is very important since provides the direction of the SHPD for the next five years. Please let Hawaii folks know that they’re supposed to have a say in the matter.

Here’s the link for the questionnaire.

Veteran reporter and MidWeek columnist Bob Jones shared his view on the selection of a new Honolulu police chief:

I know the law requires widespread advertising for a new Honolulu chief of police, but does selecting one from outside make sense? Experience tells us no.

We’re not a police force in extremis that needs a William J. Bratton (New York and Los Angeles) to come riding to the rescue of a force out of control. We’re a low crime city with a big city drug problem but a police force with very minor problems of corruption and promotion. We don’t need an outsider to change our culture.

In fact, our police culture contributes to our relative contentment with HPD. I can’t imagine how a Mainland chief would improve things here.

I’ve watched Oahu chiefs since January of 1963, never seen a bad or corrupt one. I agree that the current one has problems of getting along with the rank-and-file and the media, and mainly has to go because he failed at the outset to put himself up for a 5-year term and wanted only one more year. Only when the Police Commission balked did he say “okay, five years.”

But why not look deep down in the ranks, maybe as deep as major, for our next leader? A community police officer. One without such an old-fashioned approach to the news media.

I happen to know that the commissioners regularly check this site and I figured it’s my best way to reach them.

And the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting yesterday criticized the media’s misreporting on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

The lengthy and detailed assessment notes, in part:

But anyone who reads Sotomayor’s 2001 speech can see that the prevailing media discussion is totally misleading. Her point was that people’s backgrounds affect how they see the world. This would seem to be a rather uncontroversial fact of life; justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Samuel Alito made similar statements about their own backgrounds to no great controversy.

In regards to cases involving race and gender discrimination, which was the topic under discussion, Sotomayor was arguing that the experience of facing discrimination may help in judging such cases–pointing out that despite the presumption that “a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases,” such wise old men as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Benjamin Cardozo “voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society.” She added: “Let us not forget that until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case.”

It’s definitely good reading and a needed corrective.