May 2023 Gleanings
Scholarship winners announced, new newsmaker in the works, save the date for Dec. 2 Torch of Light event. Read on for all details
MEETING NOTICE: BIPC Board meeting via Zoom 11 a.m. Saturday, June 10. Open to members. Email President Michael Phillips at mphillips@weatherboy.com for a link. Have news to share? Just email Gleanings editor Nancy Cook Lauer at nclauer@gmail.com for inclusion in an upcoming issue.
The Big Island Press Club celebrated its four scholarship winners Thursday evening at the Seaside Restaurant and Aqua Farm. (l-r) Brian Wild, former scholarship winner and guest speaker, Maya-Lin Green, Kai Hayashida, Lichen Forster and King James Mangoba.
BIG ISLAND PRESS CLUB AWARDS 4 STUDENTS SCHOLARSHIPS
The Big Island Press Club awarded scholarships totaling $5,000 to four students this year, with each winner receiving $1,250 to pursue a higher education in journalism or a related field. The Big Island Press Club is Hawaii’s oldest press club, protecting the public’s right to know since 1967.
The recipients are:
● Lichen Forster, of Mountain View, is a geology major at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and has been editor in chief of the student newspaper, Ke Kalahea, for the past three semesters. Forster, who's majoring in geology, wants to pursue a career in science journalism. Forster plans to be an exchange student at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand for the fall semester, while continuing the newspaper work as copy editor. This is their third BIPC award.
"I’ve enjoyed leading the team and being able to make important decisions about how our budget is spent and our team operates,” Forster said. “(Now), I’m excited to use the skills I’ve gained to make our writing as good as I know it can be."
● Maya-Lin Green, of Waimea, is a 2008 graduate of Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a communications and media journalism major at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Green joined Ke Kalahea as a staff writer in the spring semester. She plans a career in public relations, writing or a related field.
“I love writing, and it would be incredible to write about things that I find interesting, engaging and dynamic,” Green said. “I like reading and writing about the intersections of pop culture, environmentalism, human interest, psychology, science and politics.”
● Kai Hayashida, a Hilo High 2023 graduate from Hilo, plans to major in journalism and will attend Whitworth University, in Spokane, Washington, this fall. Hayashida called Hilo High School athletic contests on its Hiki No video media platform KVIKS.
“Working for a large company that broadcasts major sporting events has been a dream of mine since at least fifth grade,” Hayashida said. “All I want to do is to get involved with sports and share my writing to the world.”
● King James Mangoba, of Papaaloa, is a 2023 graduate of Hilo High School who plans to major in communications. Mangoba will attend Fordham University in New York City. Mangoba participated as a part of the crew to produce a story video for PBS Hawaii’s Hiki No program, an activity that whetted his interest in television journalism.
“I would like to use my voice to lift and showcase inspiring and unseen stories within my community,” Mangoba said. “Being a storyteller for Hawaii is my way of giving back to my community.”
Awarding scholarships to promote journalism is an annual event and one of the primary projects of the press club, which is the oldest in the state.
Generous gifts from several Big Island Press Club members along with an annual donation from the family of Bill Arballo, have supplemented funds previously donated by the families of Hugh Clark, Robert Miller, Jack Markey and Yukino Fukabori.
Bill Arballo was a founding a member of Big Island Press Club in 1967 and its first president. A former United Press International reporter, he is honored through a scholarship funded by an annual donation of from Bill's daughter, Teresa Barth, and her husband, Bill. Arballo died in 2016.
Hugh Clark was called a “newspaperman’s newspaperman.” He wrote about crime, politics, sports and volcanic eruptions for the Honolulu Advertiser and the Hawaii TribuneHerald. He was a charter member of the Big Island Press Club. Clark died in 2015.
Robert Miller was a UPI reporter whose 1968 speech to BIPC inspired Ouida Hill, wife of state Sen. W.H. “Doc” Hill, to donate $1,000 to start the Miller Scholarship. Miller died in 2004.
The late Jack Markey was a visible street-side fixture in Hilo. With poor vision and unable to drive a car, Markey, a senior citizen walked and hitchhiked around town to sell radio advertising, He recruited new members for BIPC and was instrumental in building the BIPC scholarship endowment.
Noteworthy for reporting “hard news” for the Hawaii Tribune-Herald as early as the 1930s when women reporters were generally on the society page, Yukino Fukabori, who later taught news writing at Hilo High School, funded a scholarship in 1993. She died in 1995.
The BIPC Scholarship committee for 2023 was chaired by Tiffany Edwards Hunt, BIPC vice president, a middle school teacher, former journalist and longtime former advisor to Ke Kalahea. Members were Royelen Boykie, retired digital strategist and fundraiser and BIPC board member; John Burnett, police and courts reporter for the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, former BIPC president and three-time BIPC scholarship recipient, and Robert Duerr, documentary film producer and Senior Active member of Outdoor Writers of America Association.
The Big Island Press Club holds events throughout the year for its members and the public to get to know each other and various newsmakers. In addition to the marquis scholarship dinner in which scholarships are awarded, the Big Island Press Club also holds an awards ceremony at the end of the year to award its meritorious Torch of Light award. Tickets for that event, which will be held Dec. 2, in Waikoloa Village, will be available for sale on the press club website later this fall. The website also provides information for people interested in joining the club or making a tax-deductible donation to the 501c3 nonprofit Big Island Press Club Scholarship Foundation at bigislandpressclub.org.
BIPC Newsmaker: Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission
BIPC continues its series of Newsmakers next month with a televised panel on the state's Correctional Commission Oversight Commission, (https://hcsoc.hawaii.gov), featuring a panel addressing problems in Hawaii's prisons and jails.
The June 19 taping of a one-hour show at Na Leo Studio in Hilo will air on Hawaii public access television channels.
BIPC board member and film maker Robert Duerr, along with his wife Adriana, will be producing the show with their Bulldoggie Productions. The Duerrs are film award winners of a Cine Golden Eagle, Four Telly Awards, a Silver Telly Award and a Rome International Film Festival honor.
The show features Kevin Dayton, a former BIPC board member and Honolulu Civil Beat reporter who writes on corrections issues; Christin Johnson, oversight coordinator of the Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission and Mark Patterson, Oversight Commission chairman and Office of Hawaiian Affairs appointee.
Inmate bunks are seen tucked into a corner of a common room in this Nov. 22, 2019, photo taken during a media tour of Hawaii Community Correctional Center. (Nancy Cook Lauer/All Hawaii News) Issues at Hawaii prisons, including overcrowding and facility shortfalls, have been serious and ongoing, with the Hilo facility Hawaii Community Correctional Center a particular problem.
In fact, as Dayton detailed in a March 27 Civil Beat article (https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/03/judge-seeing-is-believing-when-it-comes-toatrocious-conditions-at-the-hilo-jail/), Big Island Chief Judge Robert Kim, calling the conditions at the Hilo jail "atrocious," and several other judges have refused to send trial defendants there at all.
Johnson, in a Sept. 23 Hawaii News Now report (https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2022/09/23/state-official-calls-completeoverhaul-hccc-describing-facility-terrible-mess/), called for a complete overhaul of the Hilo jail, describing it as a "terrible mess," adding she'd never seen a facility like it. Johnson previously worked at the infamous Rikers Island facility in New York.
Stay tuned for program times and channels.
Legislative recap: Win some, you lose some
The Big Island Press Club championed the public’s right to know during the 2023 legislative session, providing testimony and rounding up support for bills that promoted open government, freedom of press, and protections for journalists. The session ended with mixed results, with two bills sent to the governor for his signature and two bills failing to get as far.
HB 712, relating to recordings of public meetings, was sent to the Governor for signature. This bill encourages boards to maintain recordings of their meetings on the board’s website regardless of whether the written minutes of the meeting have been posted. And it requires boards to provide the State Archives with copies of recordings before removing them from their website. It also requires written minutes of board meetings to include a link to the electronic audio or video recording when it’s been posted online.
HB 1502 was also transmitted to the governor for signature; known as the “Journalist Shield Law," this bill limits compelled disclosure of sources or unpublished information for journalists, newscasters, and “persons participating in collection of dissemination of news or information of substantial public interest.” While there are some exceptions established in the bill, BIPC and the Hawaii Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists both pushed for its approval. Prior to this bill making it through the House and Senate, Hawaii was one of two states in the entire United States that didn’t have a shield law in place for journalists.
HB 522 relating to emergency management failed to get into conference. Despite passing through House and Senate Committees and get referred to conference, and even though Senate and House conferees were appointed prior to the deadline to do so, they failed to actually have a conference on this bill thereby killing it. HB 522 fixes HRS 127A-13 which currently gives the governor or a county mayor the unconstitutional power to suspend electronic media communications in an emergency. The Big Island Press Club and other organizations in Hawaii, including the Hawaii Association of Broadcasters and the Society of Professional Journalists, pushed for this bill to remedy HRS 127, testifying that the government, especially in times of emergency, would want the media active and involved and communicating to the public the facts and ground truth of whatever is happening. Big Island Press Club Testimony wrote, “The hunger for fact-based information is never higher than during an emergency, and when that information is hard to come by, people will sometimes resort to rumors and speculation. That should be the last thing the government would want in a declared emergency.” Unfortunately, Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency, HI-EMA, disagreed, testifying against the bill saying their ability to suspend media communications could “save lives.” Both BIPC and the Hawaii Association of Broadcasters is invested in seeing this bill resurface in 2024.
HB 719, which would cap costs on the reproduction of certain government records, made it to conference but died there. Had it passed, not only would it impose caps on reproduction costs, but it would waive the cost of duplication of government records provided to requestors in electronic format, impose a cap on charges for searching for, reviewing and segregating records and provided a waiver of fees when the public interest is served by a record’s disclosure. This measure passed the 2022 Legislature but was vetoed by then-Gov. David Ige, earning him the Lava Tube dishonor from BIPC.
-- submitted by Michael Phillips
2023 Big Island Press Club Board
Please feel free to contact any board members with your suggestions, or if you wish to volunteer!
President: Michael Phillips, journalist, meteorologist, Weather Channel <mphillips@weatherboy.com>
Vice President: Tiffany Edwards Hunt, former journalist, middle school teacher <newswoman@mac.com>
Treasurer: Bob Duerr, documentary film producer and Senior Active member of Outdoor Writers of America Association<surf77@me.com>
Secretary: Nancy Cook Lauer, retired journalist, advisor to Ke Kalahea UHH student newspaper, blogger www.allhawaiinews.com <nclauer@gmail.com>
Director: Ross Wilson, PR, Current Events <rossw@current-events.com>
Director: Royelen Lee Boykie, retired digital strategist and fundraiser <Royelen@bigislandpressclub.org>
Director: Patsy Iwasaki, professor, University of Hawaii-Hilo <piwasaki@hawaii.edu>
Director: Nate Gaddis, former journalist, real estate agent, <nategaddis@gmail.com>
Immediate Past President: John Burnett, journalist, Tribune-Herald <jburnett@hawaiitribuneherald.com>
