We couldn’t help noticing the makeup of the Advertiser’s “Hawaii” section this week. Boiled down to a few words: crime, courts, police. Is this the shape of “news” to come?

Broadcast news figured out that court/crime reporting can be done on the cheap. After all, it’s organized and delivered daily. Reporters go through the daily court dockets like a menu of available stories, select one or more (now it looks like more is the norm), and bada bing, the day’s quota is fulfilled.

We listen to the KHON 6 p.m. news simulcast on radio while driving home in the evenings, and on some days the their version of the news is just crime-crime-crime-crime, and they’re not unique.

The way crime is reported, you wouldn’t know that Hawaii actually has a relatively low crime rate and that rate has been dropping. But I guess reminding readers of that doesn’t make for efficient daily reporting.

Also on the news front–is it news that one out of 50 very pregnant cows gave birth during a flight to Hawaii? The Advertiser thinks so. The underlying news about a revival of local milk production is news, though. Too bad reporter Andrew Gomes didn’t have the time to dig into the question of how this dairy has survived the decimation of the local milk industry. Have the economics changed? How is it managing to expand in today’s financial environment? There’s obviously a lot more to this story than a premature calf.

Long-time readers of this site may recall my on again-off again search for replacements for my favorite cooking spoons. I wrote about my search back in 2001, and that inquiry drew a lot of response. I still get an occasional message from another poor soul also searching for the same thing.

In 2005, copies of my favorites became available again, but it wasn’t long before that source dried up. But this week I got good news from a friend.

Hey … look what I found. Looks like Rosti got back into the spoon and bowl making business! PortStyle Enterprises: Rosti also Kitchen Stuff Plus –
Woo-hooh!

I should order soon to get them while I can!