I started getting emails Wednesday morning following eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar’s announcement of the planned launch of “a Honolulu-based local news service that will produce original, in-depth reporting and analysis of local issues in Hawaii.”
Plans which, they way, will create a profitable and sustainable enterprise.
All I could think of was, “Good luck!”
Seriously, though, it’s hard to know just what to think about it.
I don’t know Omidyar, have no idea how he perceives Hawaii politics, and, so far, nothing has been disclosed about the business plan for the enterprise that would allow it to climb the cliffs of profitability and sustainability.
Omidyar could afford to run a substantial news room with the small change from his billionaire’s income, but this isn’t charity, it’s a business being described as a prototype of something new in journalism.
The web form set up to accept resumes from those interested in hiring on with the project asks just a few direct questions.
In 100 words or less, when did you first realize that the Web was going to change journalism forever?
In 100 words or less, what advice would you give the news industry?
Then applicants are asked for the best headline and best lead “you’ve ever written”.
Whew.
Omidyar is being advised by retired McClatchy veep Howard Weaver, who has been doing a lot of high profile blogging and other writing since retiring at the end of 2008.
Weaver’s musings on the future of journalism have not been without controversy.
Clearly there’s a lot of talent involved in the planning and there’s no shortage of experienced journalists looking for work.
Maybe we’ll be at ground zero of a significant turn in online journalism. I’m looking forward to watching this one develop.
For another journalism model, check out this recent column from Online Journalism Review describing labor’s role in backing several different projects.
It caught my eye because I had recently speculated about the potential for labor taking a more active role backing investigative journalism here in Hawaii.
At that time, I wrote:
It seems to me that unions should be at the front end of the new journalism movement. If a major union like the HGEA mustered its resources, it could easily put together a staff of experienced reporters and convert its inward-looking newspaper and web site into widely read news sources covering labor issues. Unions could even pool resources to create a labor-oriented newspaper with in-depth reporting.I don’t want to say that the unions deserve the bad press they get, but it’s certainly true that they aren’t doing themselves or their members any favors with the current policy of tight lips.
It’s happening elsewhere, why not Hawaii?
Then, from the “with friends like that” file, did you notice the “editor’s note” in the current issue of Honolulu Weekly, introducing and essentially undermining the cover story?
The cover story is by Curt Sanburn, himself a former Weekly editor, who is able to gently explain how out of step Honolulu’s planned rail project is from the urban transit mainstream and the latest transit technology, represented by at least 20 mainland cities that have built new rail systems in the past two decades.
But before readers get to Sanburn’s story, they hit editor Ragnar Carlson’s roadblock which warns that, in Carlson’s view, the rail story just isn’t up to his reporting standards.
But why in the world would the Weekly’s editor go out of his way to undercut the issue’s lead story? If it were my story, I would be furious.
Along the way, Carlson says he wants a positive spin to stories, saying they “should be for something” and not just criticize. That’s an odd, middle of the road stance for a publication that postures as an alternative weekly. I’m more used to hearing that from the more conservative mainstream.
Hard hitting social and political criticism, often lacking that benign positive perspective, has long found a home in weeklies. Heck, it’s been the backbone of the alternative weekly movement. But perhaps no longer in HW, it seems.
As a Weekly reader, and a former contributor, I can’t help being disappointed.
Now, getting back to Sanburn’s story. He was able to get Toru Hamayasu, Honolulu’s chief transit planner, to acknowledge that the Hannemann administration’s rail plan is pretty much unchanged from the plan Hamayasu worked on as a young engineer in the 1970s during one of Mayor Frank Fasi’s administrations.
At that time, light rail technology was yet to be developed and heavy automated trains on elevated concrete platforms were really “state of the art” in transit planning, both technically and philosophically.
That is no longer the case, as technological developments and concepts of urban transportation have leapfrogged past the world of heavy rail. But, for reasons that remain murky, Hamayasu and the city are essentially clinging to their original Fasi-era plan. It’s not at all clear whether they are personally invested in their previous work and don’t want to let it go, or find it easier to incorporate the plans developed decades ago, or are just riding the momentum of those prior plans. For whatever reason, Mayor Hannemann’s administration is determined to plunge ahead into the past.
I’ve been watching The Faster Times, published and edited by Sam Apple in Brooklyn and supported, they say, by journalists themselves. It is off the air right now, maybe just a glitch. The tweets give no hint of trouble.
Then there is/was New Pacific Voice….
I think it does help to have significant backing at the start, but ultimately the stable of writers/producers/videographers has to be large enough and competent enough, and whatever the plan is, it needs to be sustainable. There are examples that are working, for example the Voice of San Diego.
I disagree totally with your assessment that elevated rail is “backwards.” It’s the only way to go for Oahu because it will be quicker (columns and then precast sections simply swung into place. Fewer condemations, no loss of existing lanes, and best of all no conflicts with existing traffic (I almost got hit twice in San Diego recently). Despite the claims of false critics it is cheaper than at grade.
Let’s look at the KS plan that was quickly disavowed by the KS Trustees who said it was the work of an out of control land division who hired the equivalent of a push poller. Do you think a plan with 90 degree trurns through the capital district is wise? Do you think taking existing lanes from from Kapiolani would be smart? The sewer work went over well with landowners along that route. Think what two years of transit work would do.
Without mass transit as proposed, Honolulu will be unlivable within 10 years unless like you someone can stay at home.
FYI: Hal Barnes works as a special assistant to Mayor Mufi Hannemann.
no. I live in Columbia, SC retired sorry
New transit technology? NEW does not always mean BETTER.
To be efficient a mass transit system has to be away from ground traffic. Seeing how things can get locked up on streets and freeways by an accident or two, it wouldn’t make sense to spend all that money on a system that will also get locked up by the same traffic snarls.
People will block the at-grade rail right-of-ways the same way they block intersections and illegally use freeway shoulders as lanes when traffic gets messed up. The only way to avoid this is to separate the rail transit system from the rest of the mess.
Since December when the at grade rail system was finished, there have been 5 collisions per month in Phoenix. Rail and pedestrians and street vehicles don’t go well together. Obviously.
P.S. I don’t work for Mufi. In fact, I don’t intend to vote for him if he runs for governor. I’d rather he finished his term as mayor and see this rail project through.
It’s a shame that the Weekly has lost it’s bite & color…..
Having read the Weekly article online, it’s no wonder the editor distances himself and his staff from the story. It rehashes arguments about at-grade rail that have been aired in the local media, along with a jumbo helping of contempt for the elevated rail system. The first paragraph is loaded with negative imagery, which sets the tone for the entire article.
The City’s counterpoint isn’t presented until the last five paragraphs of a 2,300 word piece. A fair and balanced article like this would be perfect for Fox News ;P
Regarding online journalism, I hope media companies look at it as a challenge, rather than an obstacle. When Blaine created StarBulletin.com he was among those who led the way in how we looked at the news business in Hawaii.
With the broadening of wireless internet access, the increase of bandwidth, and the immediacy of the web, the internet combines the real-time availability of radio, the random access of print and the multimedia-rich content of television.
From way back, at the turn of the (21st) century, Blaine and I were strong advocates of making the most of this potential.
It’s still klutzy to the average user. But don’t expect it to stay that way much longer.
I couldn’t agree more with RLB_Hawaii. I just finished reading The Weekly’s rail story. What a joke. It’s amounts to Curt Sanburn’s opinion, as supported by news that broke in other newspapers. What are we supposed to take away from that? That The Weekly is anti-rail or that The Weekly is anti-journalism? Glad to know from the editor’s note that at least the latter isn’t true.
It will be interesting to see if this new online media site will have an active moderator for it’s message postings.
If interest grows substantially, then someone is going to have to filter the increase in noise.
I was thinking that in a huge volume site, someone could be assigned to throw the noise (75% of posts) into a junk-pile.
A Digg concept could be used to resurrect junk-pile posts. (So many people would have to press resurrect to have the post come out).
I know Curt Sanburn’s a local boy, correct me if I’m wrong but hasn’t he been in San Francisco for about 7 years now? I wonder if he uses the BART over there, I know I do. If you build it, they will come, I say.
But I don’t think that’s the point. I think most of the current crop of critics support rail and want rail. The point is how they build the best rail system that we can at the best price. The city’s choice, essentially identical to a mid-1970s design, doesn’t make that cut.
And if the critics arguments were easily dismissed, as some leaving comments suggest, then it should have been easy for the city to include them in the EIS as it had formally said that it would, so that pros and cons of each choice could have been publicly evaluated.
That thing in the Weakly was a real turkey.
Nice if we had a real alt weekly.
Good luck to Pierre. Town’s wide open.
*Cough*
How about an RSS fed site that is already being run out of the Big Island for Big Island folks.
http://fbiblogs.com is in it’s 9th month of existence and is run with zero dollars.
It actually is getting a big make over in the next few months as well.
According to this entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_households_without_a_car
19.36% of households in Honolulu don’t even have a car. Much higher figure than I had thought.
i haven’t read the weekly story or editor’s note, but in general principle, it seems strange and unprofessional. isn’t the editor supposed to support his or her writers? why run a story you don’t support? seems to point to some internal issue within the organization… and if that’s the case, why did the publisher let it run like that? airing dirty laundry?
Sidestepping the rail issue altogether, I’ve been much more fascinated by the way the Weekly dealt with the story; first Ragnar distanced himself, then apologized the following week for venting over internal office matters. At the same time, he appears to be happily running every letter of complaint that comes in to the paper regarding the story. This strikes me as interesting: Someone with more time on their hands might better confirm this, but over the period that Ragnar has been editor, I’ve noticed a tendency to run very few critical letters in the paper (and have heard from others that their letters not only went unpublished, but that they received somewhat snide replies from the editor to their criticism). This is a departure from the early days of the Weekly, when the editors seemed much more willing to run critical commentary in their pages.
The fact that The Weekly doesn’t allow comments on their website says it all…. it’s almost 2010! Given their new media approach that excludes….no, prevents… community response, the Carlsons seem more concerned with promoting their beliefs about Honolulu, rail, or any other topic, than hearing from anyone else..
But just to be clear, publisher Laurie Carlson is not related to editor Ragnar Carlson, as far as I know.