Rod Is “Profiled”, No Hope in Journalism
It’s official. The state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations has informed me, “Unemployment Insurance claimants such as yourself … will not, or are not likely to, return to their previous industry or occupation because of labor market conditions.”
You will remember that I, Gleanings editor Rod Thompson, was laid off from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on Feb. 27 after 31 years with the company.
I was going to make only a brief mention of this in the Gleanings, but member Chris Loos urged me to give it prominence because of what it says about the field of journalism. Actually, the quotation above, from a form letter, never uses the word journalism. It does say that I was identified by “worker profiling.”
“The Department of Labor and Industrial Relations … uses an automated system based on a statistical model that was developed by the U.S. Department of Labor….
The [Hawaii] department selects claimants with characteristics that historically indicate a high probability of not returning to their former industry or occupation…”
It was like a draft notice. I was ordered to “report for reemployment orientation.” The session was “mandatory,” the letter said.
At the orientation, I was given the option of choosing from several workshops. The one I am looking forward to is “Eight Easy Ways To Keep A Job.” I like the word “easy.”
Amending BIPC Bylaws – The national decline in traditional journalism is mirrored by the decline in the number of BIPC members in the Professional category. The addition by Mayor Billy Kenoi of three journalists to his staff, Hunter Bishop, Kevin Dayton, and Bobby Command, removes those three from the pool of active journalists. The Honolulu Advertiser has not filled the vacancy left by Kevin Dayton, and my own paper, the Star-Bulletin, has permanently closed all Neighbor Island offices. Without new Professionals, the club, as now organized, will have no one to run it. It will die.
Bloggers and other Internet writers may be a new source of membership, but their position in the club is not necessarily clear under the existing Bylaws.
A more immediate problem is a kind of arthritis in the Bylaws. In forty years, they have lost their flexibility. Where the Bylaws originally created an amended process that would take about three months, the process currently takes about nine months. That’s because the Bylaws call for amendments to be handled in general membership meetings, which in 1967 were taking place every month. Now we have only three general membership meetings per year, the Annual Dinner at the beginning of the year, the Scholarship Dinner in the summer, and the Christmas Party at the end of the year.
The board of directors is working on a proposal which will restore the amendment process to its original three-month time span. We’ll let you know more next month.
Our web site – Take a look at our web site, bigislandpressclub.com, which hasn’t changed in 14 months. By now, Tiffany Edwards Hunt would be about 21 months pregnant. Ouch. Two general solutions are available, “static” and “interactive.” Static means updating the site more often, but only about once a month. Interactive would allow members and even nonmembers to post news and comments minute by minute.
The interactive option seems much more attractive, but it would certainly mean posting the kind of comments you are reading right now on a day by day basis. There would be practically no point in rounding up old comments on a monthly basis. So there would be no point for the Gleanings to exist.
Board member Tim Bryan objected to that idea. “I have…questions about what a redesign would mean,” he wrote, “and until we get answers, I do not see a reason to make implications or guess about what might happen to the club or the Gleanings. Let’s get answers to these questions and others that might be posed first.”
Dave responds – Last month we noted that BIPC had given the dishonorable Lava Tube Award to our own member, Noelani Whittington. We also noted that Noe had banned our new member, Dave Corrigan, although the ban was later rescinded. Dave had the following reply.
First, I would like to thank all the news folk (the traditional as well as the bloggers ) for sticking up for public information, and our beloved First Amendment.
I do want to say here, “on the record”, that I harbor no ill will towards Noelani over this situation. I, like the others named in the memo, was surprised to hear such a document existed. However, while the specific reasons for my inclusion on the defunct directive elude me, I can understand why it may have happened. When I think about what I am trying to do with this Big Island Video News venture from the perspective of others, I can see how it may perplex. What is this thing? A blog? An online TV station? Some kind of YouTube? Is this news?
I can also understand if Noelani was nervous about me. I just arrived on the island last summer. I don’t expect people to know my background in TV news. I don’t even expect to be instantly respected. I believe that respect as a journalist needs to be earned through years of responsible reporting (in whatever form that reporting may take.)
Noelani did call me to apologize after this happened, and I accepted the apology and put it behind me.
Keep in mind, I come to Hawaii from the land of corruption and public disinformation. Anywhere, USA? No, I mean Atlantic City, a resort town conscious of image, controlled by the economic engine of a casino empire. City hall’s revolving door ushered elected officials ‘directly to jail’ as fast as a Chance card in Monopoly. It was a “Betrayal of Public Trust of the Month” show that, as you can imagine, forced the adoption of a less than welcoming media policy. Heck, a good day was when the Public Works director DIDN’T try to mug you on the street outside the federal courthouse. Noelani’s memo feels like I’ve been adorned with an orchid lei compared to some of those brutes.
I know this last month or so has been rough for Noelani, and my heart goes out to her, because I do believe she was trying to act in the best interest of the county. Trying to figure out a fair media policy is not as easy as it sounds in this new age of communication.
And Bill responds – Our founding president, Bill Arballo, responded from California. Kudos to BIPC for the action it took re Noelani. Painful but correct. BIPC can’t be a whistle blower and exempt one of its own. I’m certain Noelani is a professional journalist and over the long haul will be a better rep for her dept.
And Hugh Clark – Well, I like Noelani but cannot excuse her half-baked ban on bloggers. She was having a “bad hair day.”
Actually, she has made Public Works more relevant. She is an old Advertiser hand which may explain my like of her. I sent her an e-mail, advising she take her licking and hang in there. I fully agree we cannot exempt our own.
Keep in mind that since Hunter launched these awards, we both discredited and saluted Gov. Cayetano, both for good reason. It is a politically neutral program. I was lukewarm at the outset but now strongly back it.
Our friends at PTA – Last year we spent several months trying to set up a tour of Pohakuloa Training Area. One of the requests we made was to see Kipuka Kalawamauna, the green area on the west side where the Saddle Road will be realigned. PTA p.r. man Chic Becerra ignored the requests and stopped answering my emails. This month I got an invitation to join an Earth Day tour at PTA on April 23. (I didn’t go.) The featured event? A hike in Kipuka Kalawamauna.
Chris recommends – Here’s a movie review from Chris Loos. Go see the journalism thriller State of Play, which is showing at the Prince Kuhio theaters and elsewhere. The story follows a reporter (Russell Crowe) on a case that mixes a fictitious Blackwater-type organization with a Chandra Levy-type case. It involves a congressman (Ben Affleck) who was once the reporter’s college roommate. Helen Mirren plays the editor forced to appease her non-journalism bosses. Despite the unrealistic conflict of interest between the reporter and his source and the even less realistic dangers to the reporter, the film does a good job of capturing the state of newspaper journalism on the brink of extinction.
Sunshine? – On April 22, the County Council voted 9-0 against a resolution to change the way it handles bills and resolutions amended during a council session. Even the councilman who proposed the resolution, J Yoshimoto, voted against it.
Opponents of this failed change saw it as an attack on “sunshine” (small s), meaning open government. The state Office of Information Practices, which watchdogs the Sunshine Law (capital s), said this is not a Sunshine Law issue.
The council agenda said: Amends the Rules of Procedure and Organization of the Council of the County of Hawaii – Proposes to delete in its entirety Rule No 24 Subsection (e) relating to the requirement to hold over bills or resolutions that are amended on the floor to the next regular meeting
Rule 24 rule requires a “holdover” (delay) when an amendment is “substantial.”
This fuss started when council member Pete Hoffmann introduced an unrelated resolution with a minor mistake. It referred to Maui County action in “2008” when it should have said “2009.” Hoffmann wanted to correct the error and vote right away. But his fellow council members decided the date change was “substantial.”
“Only an attorney could argue with a straight face that a change in a date of a Maui council resolution from 2008 to 2009 in one of the ‘whereas’ clauses represents a substantial change,” said reader John Powell on BIPC member Tiffany Edwards Hunt’s bigislandchronicle.com.
At this point, I need to reveal that I deliberately left out important – “substantial” – information. Hoffman’s resolution dealt with genetically modified organisms. That’s the contentious subject this jockeying was really about.
My feeling is that the best comment was on April 19 in Tiffany’s blog. Reader and former BIPC member Brian Jordan wrote (I am not making this up), “If a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass and if worms had machine guns birds wouldn’t mess with them.”
