Recent photos: Vieques (Puerto Rico) 1978 • Malaekahana 1959 •
Historic Kualoa sugar mill • Kaaawa in November •

February 24, 2007 - Saturday [ permalink ]

The Akron Beacon Journal Newspaper, purchased last year by Star-Bulletin owner David Black, has announced that it will drop its daily stock listings and its separate business section on weekdays in favor of a combined sports-business section with slimmed down stock highlights.

A column by Chris Roush from Talking Biz News, a web site produced at the University of North Carolina, predicted that this will become and industry trend and commented: "What it translates to is a loss of prestige for business coverage in the newsroom, and in journalism overall."

Roush went on:

Let me ask all business editors where this is being considered to go to their editors and ask them this question: What is more important to people, knowing information about their jobs and the economy, or knowing whether their favorite sports team won last night? (And I went to the UNC-NC State game last night.) At some point, newspapers will have to decide whether they want to improve society or not.

An article in Slate by Jack Shafer explores the world of newspaper profits, consolidation, and future opportunities based on investments in newsrooms, which seems to endorse David Black's approach in taking over the Star-Bulletin. This one is must reading.

The Seattle Times today seems quite familiar, with stories about politicians discussing a plan for pedestrian safety, a debate over highway construction vs. a tunnel, and news about a new round of charges against Lt. Ehren Watada.

And my friend Mark took another swing at Honolulu's highways v. transit issue:

Many think they should be privatized, to help fix the problems you mentioned, such as excessive cost and mortal danger. Others think that at least their financing should be linked to direct user fees, not broader gasoline or other taxes that affect people who don't use the highways. And road pricing according to demand, of course (a higher fee at rush hour), would help regulate trafffic flow.

There also is the issue of eminent domain, a massive subsidy to road builders (and a massive injustice to people whose land and homes are sezied), and without which we undoubtedly would not have our sprawling roads and highway system. If governments or private road builders had to pay for the full cost of the land they needed, perhaps we would already be flying around in anti-magnetic carts or teleporting with abandon by now, as the cheaper alternative.

So please, forget the train idea. It's probably a done deal, but there are better ways to solve the problem — and they'll still be needed even after the train is built, because it's not going to be the solution!

Personally, I don't view rail as "The" solution. I do accept the idea, though, as part of the overall transportation system.

Another friend added these reactions:

I had the exact same thought in reading the story yesterday-the absence of any mention of the Ethics Commission.  And, I thought there was a huge disconnect between Charles Djou's comment about noy taking yaxpayer money for trips and the point of the story--accepting travel expenses from potentiial City vendors.  Maybe the City should be paying for the travel if it "redounds to the benefit" of the City.

And with respect to your condo, the resturauntuer's  statement about drugdealers, hookers and criminals reminded me of Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves"  Maybe you can make it your official theme song.

And so it goes on this Saturday morning.

February 23, 2007 - Friday [ permalink ]

Ms. Harry is the leadoff for this Feline Friday. We had a load of dirt delivered for some new plants along the side of the house, and Harriet apparently found it quite irresistible. Her red dirt paws and resulting red footprints told the whole story. In any case, just click on Harriet for more of this week's cats.

Ooops. Wednesday's entry about the Bistro restaurant was quoted in a Pacific Business News story yesterday. It may be the first time I've been quoted with attribution to this blog. I hope the link works for non-subscribers.

And retired Star-Bulletin editor Chuck Frankel had high praise for the Bistro:

    I was sorry to read, on your website, that the Bistro at Century Center is closing. It was my favorite high-cost restaurant.  It had the best onion soup in town, since the closing of Strawberry Connection. Its service was impeccable and the food was great.  Because of the prices, I could afford to go there only once a year, in contrast to New Kapahula Chop Suey, our destination of about once a week.

This response from a reader arrived early yesterday a.m. in response to my comments about Councilman Charles Djou:

Djou's opposition to the rail transit "junkets" may be political posturing, but the fact that he hasn't gone to see any of those rails systems "in action" doesn't mean he is any less credible about opposing rail transit in Hawaii. He has reams of fairly conclusive studies attesting to their enormous expense and lack of effectiveness. Seeing a money-losing, ineffective train "in action" can only impress those who are easily impressed by big shiny toys.

More to the point, is my opposition to war less credible because I haven't seen war "in action"?

Actually, despite this critique, I stand by my point. Let's apply the same logic to highways and roads. Definite money losers, a bottomless pit for billions of public dollars as well as a major private cost for every road using family. Taxes? Better believe it. Also increasingly ineffective. Dangerous to boot, with people being killed almost daily on or around them. Roads are definitely part of the transportation problem. On paper, it looks like we've got to get rid of roads and highways sooner rather than later. But visit a community dependent on roads and you probably won't find a whole lot of people with that viewpoint. Seeing roads in operation gives you an appreciation for how the system works and how people feel about it. There aren't a lot of people who want to give up our roads. And in places with functioning transit systems, our experience has been that people like transit and use it.

An AP story this week told the story of a stolen laptop in San Francisco, this one with a happy ending. Brenda in Austin, who called it to my attention, comments: "I love what the wife says about her husband!"

February 22, 2007 - Thursday [ permalink ]

Holding a public meeting of the Hawaii County Council via videoconference gets a thumbs up on the technology side from former Tribune-Herald reporter Hunter Bishop, but he flunks the council for misusing the system by failing to remember about public testimony.

I was struck by a couple of things in yesterday's Advertiser story on a planned City Council fact-finding trip to Europe to inspect transit options. First, the story allows questions about the ethics of the trip to linger, although acknowledging it is legal. There is a city ethics commisison that could have been consulted on this issue but wasn't. There's also a long list of prior commission advisory opinions, although I have to say they aren't set out too invitingly, and otherwise the city's ethics web site is substantially less informative than the state ethics commission site, with no online access to public information such as financial disclosures by council members, department heads, and the mayor, and no access to lobbyist registrations. One has to wonder if this is part of a city legacy of discouraging public access to this kind of information.

In any case, the ethics commission dealt with almost exactly the same question back in 1990 during an earlier transit debate. Unfortunately, their advisory opinion 204 reduces discussion of whether a foreign trip to inspect mass transit systems is acceptable gets reduced to a one-liner: "In the case of the all expense paid fact-finding trips for the two key employees, the benefit of the information gained by them redounds to the City, rather than to the individuals personally."

Looking back, the public would clearly have been better served by a fuller discussion of the factors involved in approving such a gift of travel, precedents, etc.

In any case, the second thing that hit me was Councilmember Djou's dismissive comments about official travel:

Djou said council members have gone to various places to look at transit in the past 12 months, with some trips paid by taxpayers, some by private companies. He said the trips have included visits to: Portland, Ore., Chicago, San Diego, Denver, Las Vegas, Vancouver, B.C., Singapore, Japan and Korea.

Djou said he has not gone on any transit trips. "I don't take taxpayer money for junkets," he said.

For Djou, this is political posturing. For the public, though, it's a question of whether political officials have open access to the experience of the wider world. I worry that the same folks who will look favorably at Djou's dismissal of official trips as "junkets" also understand that management systems and approaches in many public agencies here are not up to professional standards, but they fail to make the obvious connection that travel and education are a key part of the attempt to break up the insular experiences and attitudes that so often drag down public services here.

And, if Djou hasn't taken up any of the opportunties to see rail or other forms of transit in action, why should the public give any credence to his one-sided opposition to transit? It certainly undercuts his legitimacy from my perspective.

In any case, it's after 6 a.m. and I'm out of time for today.

February 21, 2007 - Wednesday [ permalink ]

I managed to get into the Star-Bulletin today, although not the way I would have preferred. Instead, I'm quoted by reporter Nina Wu in a story about the sudden closing of The Bistro at Century Center, an upscale restaurant in a building where we own a small 300 sq. foot studio apartment. The owner of the restaurant blames the Century Center condominium association board for cancelling the restaurant's lease and then doubling the lease rent, forcing it to close. Unfortunately, I've been the board president for the past three years.

Wu did a reasonably good job dealing with a complicated situation on short notice, but I have to add a few comments. First, it is just false to say that we cancelled the Bistro's lease. In about August 2006, the Bistro failed to exercise their option to renew for a second five year term at a fixed rent. Instead, well after the option deadline, they asked for a six-month extension. The request was granted.

The restaurant owners then indicated a desire to stay and negotiate terms for a new lease. The board agreed, and hired a real estate appraiser who came up with price per square foot based on comparable rentals, and based on that the board made an initial offer which included an invitation to respond with a reasonable counter-offer. We attempted to schedule a meeting to present the offer in person and explain both its basis and our interest in keeping the restaurant, but the Bistro owners declined to meet.

We've waltzed with The Bistro before. An earlier dispute with The Bistro ended up in arbitration. At that time, like today, the Bistro's owner was big on name calling that bordered on libel. But the arbitrator, retired judge Pat Yim, found in the association's favor on every issue raised (there were several) and ordered the Bistro to pay our legal fees, which were substantial. If I can dig up my copy of the arbitrator's decision, I'll post it later today. It offers insights into the Bistro owner's approach to a variety of issues.

So now the Bistro's owner is publicly accusing our condo board of being "asanine" (he's got a right to his opinion) and "permitting" illegal activities in the building, this one a factual claim very far from the truth and, again, potentially libelous. Not a great way to start the day.

To get the bad taste out of my mouth, I'll jump immediately to this photo of yesterday's evening meal. Salmon, roasted vegetables, brown rice, white wine, and a cat on the side. Click on the photo for a better view.

Then I'll follow with one of my recent PAW (Picture a Week) selections. Said one other PAW participant, "Your sunrise reminds me of some of the works by painters of the American west - coming to mind maybe Albert Bierstadt."

February dawn

February 20, 2007 - Tuesday [ permalink ]

Okay, just when I thought all had been said about the Star-Bulletin's Beach Walk special, Bob Jones added this comment:

As I read through the yeas and nays of that Beachwalk supplement, my eyes were drawn to a Sunday New York Times Magazine long-form piece on the great success of the Toyota Motor Co. But in the latter case, the reporter included much criticism of Toyota. Nothing in the Beachwalk supplement had so much as one comment, which would be mine; that the project has created a new concrete canyon in Waikiki. And the magazine did not have any ads saying "Way To Go Toyota" or "God Bless The Toyota Motor Company." In fact, the major, double-truck ad at the front of the magazine was for the Honda Acura RL.

And if the Beachwalk supplement was strictly an editorial product of the Star-Bulletin, then why was it included as an insert in MidWeek one week after MidWeek did its cover story on the Beachwalk project.

I'm not smart enough to know all the answers. My main talent is asking questions.

Then this came in from a Canadian editor.

The question of advertiser-driven specials at newspapers is a thorny one. One could look at it half-empty or half-full. Half-empty, it's a diminution of the editorial product and a sell-out. Half-full, it helps make profits to allow editorial to keep doing great things and not, theoretically, get downsized. The latter is the practice in my chain.

Some papers are rich enough to hire all freelancers for specials and have a separate editor assemble them. Even better, at some papers, it's freelancers and an advertising department staffer. The tone, as some of those who wrote you is also important. But should one include a story by environmentalists who decry golf courses in a special section about golf courses? The advertisers would likely pull their ads if that happened consistently. No section. No sections means fewer profits.

I'm just putting this out there -- for all that's been said about the S-B since David Black took over, weren't all the other scenarios worse? At least the papers is still around, providing another voice to the Advertiser (Is it just me, or is that a horrible name?). And it's no clone of the Red Deer Advocate, for example. The S-B has changed, but does it retain some of the spirit of the past? This could be the launching pad for some comment from you.

My paper has lots of specials. The editorial writers even work on them, without bylines. I feel unaffected by them. Our coverage in the news pages does not change. If we had a special section on a business and there was adverse news for it the next month, I wouldn't back off. I feel that's what my readers expect.

Both are right, of course, Bob in terms of the journalism and my Canadian friend about the issue of practicality. He's also correct that I can't help being happy that the Star-Bulletin is still around and competing with the Advertiser. It's not a perfect situation, or a perfect newspaper, but hey, it's not a perfect world. A lot of my former colleagues are still plugging away and taking home a paycheck. To the extent that's because of the compromises that have been made, they may be necessary evils, but that's not a given and always subject to challenge.

And here's another gallery of our Kaaawa morning dogs, beginning with Ms. Hoku. We don't see her as frequently now because she's spending most mornings in the security of her house, but she watches for us whenever she's out in the yard.

click for more dogs

February 19, 2007 - Monday [ permalink ]

Business Week Online is crediting Gannett for having "the most interesting and coherent approach to rethinking journalism and news-gathering".

Following up on Saturday's entry, here's another obit of Hawaiian musician Freddy Baker (referred to as Freddie in this version).

The chair of the Pennsylvania Senate's Appropriations Committee, the equivalent of the Ways and Means Committee in our Senate, was indicted earlier this month on 139 counts including conspiracy, fraud, and obstruction of justice. It's worth checking out the Philadelphia Inquirer's special reports and ongoing coverage to get a sense of how political power can be wielded for personal gain. Could things like this happen here?

Two more comments on the Star-Bulletin's Beach Walk project. Here's one from the newsroom:

Apparently your anonymous whiner looked at the supplement but didn't actually read it. Of course Outrigger was involved from Day One. They were interviewed and the primary subject of the special. Their project is the biggest redevelopment in Waikiki for some decades and of course that is worthy of more intensive coverage.

On the other hand, reader surveys indicate that newspaper consumers expect the product to be a little ragged. If it's too slick or polished, they tend not to trust it as much. Sounds counter-intuitive, but that's the case. The slickness of the Waikiki project probably led some folks to make the assumption that it was an ad supplement.

If it had been Honolulu magazine -- where it really IS hard to tell editorial from advertorial -- no one would squawked.

Just for clarification, I did not use the name of the person who wrote the original comment on this, but the comment was not submitted anonymously.

Another reader took a contrary position:

I read the magazine. Unfortunately, it does look like an advertising supplement, not an editorial special. Here's why:

A) The cover of the magazine is a major mistake, with the large "Waikiki Beach Walk" headline above a photo of the new building. This screams "brochure". If you were a newspaper editor putting together a magazine about the Mall of America, you would not want the thing headlined "Mall of America" because it would look like something put out by Mall of America! It looks like advertising. It smells like advertising. And so it becomes advertising, whether it's paid for or not.

B) The magazine is largely dedicated to a single private redevelopment project, and it devotes heaps of coverage to its new shops and restaurants. The overall approach and packaging is somewhat narrow, lending itself to advertising, not editorial. If you as a reader were shown a magazine focused on Ko Olina or Wailea, you would likely approach it as an advertising piece. If the approach were broader, we would be having a different conversation here.

C) The Star-Bulletin's photos in the magazine are well-composed and outstanding. The press quality is fantastic. But many of the stories seem to be written solely from the viewpoint of the tourism and retail industries. There's nothing wrong with giving the view of industry, but the approach taken here is horribly lopsided. Is a single "man-on-the-street" resident quoted in the magazine? I looked on every page and couldn't find one. This makes it look like a special for industry, not for readers of a general-circulation newspaper. Some of the quotes are pure puffery. Is fluffy, lower-quality journalism the same thing as paid-for, co-opted journalism? No. But it is still somewhat degrading for the Star-Bulletin. Wary readers will see this as a package of marketing and treat it as advertorial. No respect. And the hard-working journalists will never see a commission from the ad money. Maybe they should.

Enough said for now, hopefully.

Kaaawa tidbits. First is one of the missing pet posters that's currently on telephone poles throughout the neighborhood. In this case, the missing pet is a beautiful rooster, a small reminder that we're outside of the urban core.

We're not big fans of Kaaawa's wild chickens in this age of the bird flu, but what can you do? Yesterday I discovered that a hen is hidden in the ferns just a few feet off our front deck and is apparently sitting on a batch of eggs. The last thing we need is another batch of chicks, but I don't have to heart to roust her from the nest.

February 18, 2007 - Sunday [ permalink ]

Does it violate the sunshine law if two members of the Honolulu City Council are shopping at Costco at the same time? That was the question Democratic Party chairman Mike McCartney asked yesterday, with a smile, after running into both Rod Tam and Gary Okino pushing carts through the warehouse store in Iwilei.

The Hawaii Transportation Association's political action committee claims to have found a loophole in the ethics law.

The Hawaii Operating Transporters Political Action Committee (HOTPAC), the official political action committee of HTA, faxed an invitation to legislators this past week inviting them to a free "evening of entertainment with the Society of Seven LV on Friday, March 2, 2007 at the Outrigger Main Showroom on Kalakaua Avenue."

The invitation to the private performance includes legislators and one guest each.

Last year, ethics commission director Dan Mollway warned legislators and their staff against accepting tickets to a similar private SOS performance, saying it would violate state law.

According to an Advertiser account of the incident by reporter Gordon Pang:

Mollway, in his memo, said accepting or using the tickets would violate the gifts section of the state Ethics Code. The law states that a legislator or other state employee cannot accept gifts "in which it can reasonably be inferred that the gift is intended to influence the legislator or employee" or "is intended as a reward for any official action."

Now HOTPAC says all is forgiven. According to the fax:

You may recall that last year a complaint was filed with the Ethics Commission regarding our invitation. Subsequent discussions with Dan Mollway of the State Ethics Commission confirm that it is not a violation for HOTPAC, as a non-lobbying entity, to extend the invitation.

But HOTPAC's parent organization, HTA, isn't shy about its role as lobbyist for the transporation industry.

HTA is made up of approximately 350 regulated carrier, private carrier, and allied industry members. The association serves as a central source of information by conducting research and education programs for its members. It also represents the industry's interests before county, state and federal agencies as well as county councils, the state legislature and Congress. (emphasis added)

The HTA web site points to some of the organization's current legislative agenda:

The following HTA bills were recently passed out of the House Transportation Committee. They are now with the House Judiciary Committee waiting for a hearing date:

1. HM 894 - allows 18 year olds to drive Type 3 vehicles commercially under certain conditions, excludes hazmat and school bus.

2. HB 1757 - deletes axle weight enforcement, reduces fines, establishes mail in fines.

See the February 12, 2007 issue of The Fleeting View for a list of other legislative issues that HTA has testified on.

Gareth Sakakida, one of two HOTPAC officers to sign the invitaiton, is also managing director of the HTA and, according to ethics commission records, one of the parent organization's two registered lobbyists.

If the ethics commission has really changed its position and will now allow legislators to accept the free show tickets because HOTPAC is "a non-lobbying entity", it would mean any organization could evade the ethics law's gift restriction by simply offering those gifts through a subsidiary or affiliate. I doubt that's the position of the ethics commission or its executive director.

Remember David Stegmaier, who represented Hawaii Kai in the state House from 1988-90? I just ran into his name on a list of candidates for Maryland's 18th House district in 2006. He didn't win.

He follows John Leopold, former Hawaii legislator and unsuccessful candidate for governor, who left the islands for a successful political career in Maryland. After serving in the Maryland House of Delegates beginning in 1983, the Republican was elected to the position of Anne Arundel County Executive in 2006.

This was how Mr. Silverman looked yesterday afternoon. He had just come in from an hour's walkabout and was waiting for me to accompany him to his own room downstairs, which we refer to as the kitty spa. What a life!

February 17, 2007 - Saturday [ permalink ]

Thanks to Otto von Stroheim of Tiki News for calling attention to the death of Hawaiian musician Freddy Baker in Albuquerque. Baker's obituary from the Albuquerque Journal is a small lesson in the history of the Hawaiian diaspora in the post-WWII era. Baker toured the U.S. in the 1950's as "Freddy Kekaulike Baker and the Polynesians" and ended up settling in New Mexico.

This led me to a wonderful writeup of an Albuquerque tiki-bar restaurant where Baker played and, the writer says, "it seemed like no one who worked there had been allowed outside since the early '60s." A great read.

Don't miss NPR's great intervew with Charles Smith, the Navy lawyer who took the case of Guantanamo prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan to the U.S. Supreme Court. Smith is an eloquent spokesman for the principle of the rule of law. This interview is deeply disturbing, frightening, really, and at the same time it is deeply hopeful.

Last bit of reading for the morning is this piece on Donald Rumsfeld from the Asia Times.

That's enough for this morning. It's a three day weekend. I'm cooking for friends tonight and tomorrow night. The menu will depend on the shopping gods.

February 16, 2007 - Friday [ permalink ]

Yesterday's entry about the Star-Bulletin's Waikiki Beach Walk special insert apparently stirred up a bit of controversy.

A Star-Bulletin writer who asked to remain anonymous responded:

We just did what we were told... and crammed that extra work into our short-staffed schedules.

Outrigger didn't buy reporters, at least, none of us were personally enriched.

As you know, the ad weasels get the meat, while we worker-bees aren't even allowed to catch the scraps that fall off the table.

Then came the following response from S-B business editor Ken Andrade.

Perhaps your anonymous reader commenting about the Waikiki Beach Walk magazine was thrown by its format, but he or she is wrong in suggesting it is an "advertising supplement."

There was no outside control or guidance on the subjects or tone of the articles, and no editing by anyone outside the Star-Bulletin newsroom. No one at Outrigger or the advertisers saw any editorial copy before it went to press.

Your anonymous reader apparently does not read the Style and Travel magazines produced by the New York Times (and similar magazines in other publications, nationally and locally). The editorial portions of those magazines are produced by the newsrooms but carry ads related to those topics.

I'm certainly willing to hear journalistic criticism of the articles on their own merits -- assuming that the criticism isn't just a screen for a fundamental opposition to capitalism -- but to suggest that the articles were influenced by advertisers is simply mistaken.

S-B editor Frank Bridgewater also sent out an email to newsroom staff making some of the same points, which an insider later forwarded to me. It read, in part:

-- The Outrigger had zero input or control on this project. Outrigger officials were told point blank from Day 1 that they would not be able to approve/disapprove any stories and would not be able to see the magazine before it went to press.

-- S-B/MidWeek advertising people also had no involvement in story selection, layout or play or any other aspect of the news side of the project.

-- This is not a L.A. Times-Staples situation, where the Times and Staples ad reps combined to sell ads in a magazine (and split the profits) on the new Staples Center produced by the newsroom.

Bridgewater added:

(And there have been no comments that I have seen about the Advertiser's monthly Homescape magazine. It buries a small agate label saying it is "an advertising supplement" but then prominently displays names with titles such as "senior editor," "managing editor," "art director" and "chief photographer" -- all of whom work for the marketing department.)

I appreciate the responses from Ken and Frank, and their reassurances that decisions were not made by those outside the newsroom, although they confirm that Outrigger was involved from Day 1 of the project. I'll have to think about whether I'm reassured after learning the story assignments were not advertiser driven but rather considered genuine news, despite the packaging, context, and overall tone. That's a lot to swallow, but I could be off base. I'll be interested to see how others perceive the situation.

By the way, I've been told the fine printing job was done by Hagadone becaues Midweek's presses cannot do this kind of work.

Speaking of the legislature, two articles caught my eye, both in the Star-Bulletin. The first was Senator Hanabusa's column describing how bills are introduced "by request". A very educational piece. The second is