Several reporters spent yesterday catching up with the story of the evacuation of Gartley Hall at the UH Manoa campus which you read here yesterday. The story was still developing as growing concerns prompted a call to vacate the building immediately rather than allowed an extended Friday deadline.
The Star-Bulletin’s Craig Gima has the best story this morning with many details of the Gartley situation, and Dennis Oda’s basement photo completes a fine package.
On the other end of the spectrum, K-5 News at 9 p.m. ran a story last night but didn’t even send a crew for video of the building, instead relying on Google Earth for its graphic. Sort of drive-by reporting, I suppose.
Then there’s the puzzling story of the day.
The headline on a Star-Bulletin story by Gary Kubota reads:
Ethics issues could block private hiring of furloughed teachers
The first paragraph sets out the story:
Parents said a state ethics opinion poses a major hurdle in hiring teachers privately to instruct their students during the 17 days when Hawaii public schools are on furlough because of budget cuts.
But no details follow about the ethics opinion, its substance, or how it applies to this situation. All is says is that groups were advised of the opinion, whatever it says. At least in the online edition, there’s no link to the opinion, no summary of the opinion, not even any paraphrasing of the opinion.
We do get to read reactions to the opinion we know nothing about.
The Ethics Commission does have phones, and is a short walk from the Star-Bulletin newsroom, so I’m sure Kubota would have included this information in his story.
I have to conclude that this is a case of editors gone wild, slashing the substance of a story to fit into one of those small holes in the SB tabloid-style print edition.
One interesting side note. School Superintendent Pat Hamamoto has been a very visible and vocal advocate for her school system during the ongoing budget battle this year, refusing to simply line up with Governor Lingle’s game plan and instead continuing to push back against the most draconian cuts. And she’s been backed up by members of the Board of Education who have also kept telling us about the importance of education.
The University of Hawaii, on the other hand, has had little public advocacy and less publish push back from its leadership team. UH has been hurt by the transition to a new president and relatively new top administrators, who have been unable or unwilling to stand up for higher education the way that the DOE has so aggressively fought for the funds needed to serve their students.
It’s an interesting contrast.
And so it goes on this Wednesday morning.