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June 2003 The Year of Switching Commanders Contest Coups Dispatches from the Front by Burl Burlingame |
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6/6/03 I'm baaa-aack And what a long strange trip it's been. I've also got the mother of all flus, and can barely think. So in the meantime, enjoy the Star-Bulletin's redesigned Web site. |
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6/9/03 Struck low by a bug I can't believe I'm back from three weeks in Blighty and Benelux and I'm so sick that I can't leave home. Arrgh. I haven't been this ill in years. Probably exacerbated by those 18 hours in the air. And seeing the "airline" edition of "About Schmidt." |
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6/10/03 Happy birthday to those in limbo-land It's been a year, as of today, that the Gannett Advertiser's union contract expired. If you recall the excitement last year, Gannett had been toughing it out at the table, trying to force a contract into place and getting all blustery and threatening, and then when the expiration date passed, and the "good faith" provisions kicked in that provided an ongoing relationship, Gannett lost all interest in actually achieving a new contract, except for vague threats about pay decreases and layoffs. You can imagine that the staff hasn't been happy living in limbo for the last year. Expect a byline strike or a black-T-shirt day to occur soon. |
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6/11/03 Mad as hell and maybe they don't want to take it, perhaps All six Gannett Advertiser unions are taking it to the streets tomorrow. Noon, in front of the Advertiser building, be there or be square. Instead of wasting their time in gentlemanly backroom squabbling, it's the Guild's first effort to let John Q. Public know about problems 'Tiser employees are facing. Sounds like they're unhappy about the way they're being manipulated by Gannett. Duh! |
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6/15/03 Father's Day I wrote a personal piece about my journey to England with my father, who turns 80 soon. |
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6/17/03 Awards update "Hawaii's Backyard" (our Sunday Travel column by Cheryl Tsutsumi) won the Silver award in the Travel Column Category of the contest held by the 2003 Society of American Travel Writers Western Chapter. This year's winner was the Denver Post and the bronze winner was the San Diego Union-Tribune. Last year, Cheryl won the bronze. |
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6/20/03 Maybe they should take his thesaurus away I can't resist passing on this staff message from the lovely ladies in OpEd: We in the editorial department are pleased to present excerpts from the Letter of the Week. The letter is titled "Mike Rethman's Condemnation is Dearth of Sage" (spelling errors included): "I have read with hunger of a hawk your cascade of inflammatory, nebulous and callow assessement of Education K-12 in the State of Hawaii, June 10th, 03 in Honolulu Advertiser. The analysis is strawn with painful and saddistic sense of shame and disbelief. I was chilled and frosty by it. It was and still a blazing texture of snort, aversion and loathe." Further down in the letter: "Informed, is the stalactites of Ph.D.'s is reckless, senseless, debasing and ineptitude. ... A glass of decency and culture is good." Now maybe you understand why it takes so long to edit letters. |
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6/23/03 Good sports, bad sports Hawaii's Michelle Wie, 13 years old and playing with a bloody nose, became the youngest woman ever to win the national Public Links golf tournament. She thought it was pretty cool. I brought back the Brainstorm column in yesterday's Star-Bulletin, and one of the suggestions sent in to celebrate Honolulu's Centennial in 2005 was to have 100 of the worlds best golfers each match off against Michelle Wie. Now THAT would be cool. The other hot Hawaii sports story last week was University of Hawaii football coach June Jones renegotiating his contract into a salary worth more than $750,000, the highest in the western athletic conference and waaaay more than any other public official in Hawaii. But in the jump legs of articles, it's noted that most of Jones' enormous salary is coming from private donations. Really? Does that still qualify him as a public employee? Can we raise the governor's salary by hitting up "private" contributors? How about corporate contributions? Is it possible that corporations can take over sponsorship of public university sports? The Gannett Advertiser already has an "exclusive" contract with the University regarding arena games. How long before the UH team is called the Gannett Warriors? After a long courtship, high-school football coach Cal Lee is also joining the UH coaching staff. Possibly as Jones' heir apparent. But the negotiations were secret and it wasn't until Thursday night that they inked the deal. The Star-Bulletin had the story, and KGMB News knew we had the story, even though we couldn't run it until Friday. All the Gannett Advertiser had was speculation. This set the stage for a desperation move -- early editions of the Gannett story said nothing, then KGMB News reported the deal had been struck (without elaboration), and within minutes, the Gannett story changed to read that "the Advertiser has learned" Cal Lee would be joining the University. Yeah, they learned it all right -- from watching a competitor's TV newscast! Our Sports staff discovered the next day that the Gannett paper didn't confirm anything before going into print with information cribbed from the competition, and worded to make it appear as if they were breaking the story. This would make an interesting debate in a journalism ethics class. The Advertiser was lucky the story was true. |
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6/29/03 Not the good kine SPAM I went on vacation for a couple of weeks, came back, took a deep breath and opened my email at work. Yikes! There were more than 2,000 emails, of which only a dozen were "real." I wrote a short piece about it for the Star-Bulletin's "Scratchpad" at the time: I recently returned from vacation and discovered that my penis was too small. It apparently is a pathetic, shriveled nubbin, the size of a peanut and much less appetizing. The good news is that hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of people out there know all about my plight, are sympathetic and are anxious to help. They all sent me e-mails touting various lotions or exercise programs to turn Mr. Johnson back into something that will frighten horses. I also had e-mails offering to help with my mortgage. Did you know rates are better than ever and we must act now? I had no idea. And hundreds of young ladies want to show me their pictures. Even though I don't know them, we're on a first-name basis. Isn't that friendly? I think this is related to my first problem, above. Other folks sent me information about digital cameras, or time-shares in Bermuda, or cellular phones, or even offered to help me buy prescription drugs way cheap, particularly Viagra (See Problem No. 1, above). And there's the ongoing plight of that poor lady in Nigeria who needs my private banking information to transfer millions of dollars into the United States. It's heartbreaking. Gosh, the world has gotten smaller. How did all these folks get my e-mail address? Oh, yeah. See below: Burl Burlingame bburlingame@starbulletin.com |
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6/30/03 The curse of the three One of the persistant newsroom myths is that news cycles happen in groups of three. When a famous person dies, for example, we start wondering who the other two will be. In the last couple of weeks, we've lost Gregory Peck, Buddy Hackett and Katharine Hepburn. My youngest daughter is named both for Hepburn and for a dear friend. I will remain a big Hepburn fan. In the past few months, however, there have been three Hawaii deaths that I find troubling. All were people who made a major contribution to our life here in the islands, and all died way too young: Jim Bartels, former director of Iolani Palace and a sparkplug to preserve Washington Place, was both an independent spirit and consumate professional in the field of historical architecture preservation. I admired his work a great deal, and our paths often crossed. Linda Kawai'ono Delaney, a persistant and clear voice that often brought order to the many-fractured Hawaiian-rights movements, always impressed me with her dedication and passion. She was one of few in the movement who could present a cogent arguement without getting wrapped up in conflicting emotions. We didn't bump into each other much, and ofetn disagreed, but she always gave me something to think about. Glen Grant was a friend. We grew to know and like each other over the years based on a shared affinity for story-telling, mysteries and the collection of odd facts. We made each other laugh and always provided an ear for the latest spooky story. I was often a guest on his radio program where we discussed the mysteries of the day, and his coffeeshop/concert tavern/bookshop/office called The Haunt is a way-cool place. I hope it stays open. |
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Up the Ivory Tower |
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