So what's up with the Weekly?

[LikaNui]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

If I gave the impression Wanda's MM coverage was lacking, I'm sorry.

No need to apologize. I didn't get that impression from you at all, nor did I see anyone else here say anything negative about Wanda.

I apologize if I'm edgy on this subject. Try explaining to your kids why their father was the subject of a mean-spirited assault for no apparent reason on the cover of a newspaper.

Again, no need to apologize. We all know who really owes you an apology.
Only one letter on the topic in today's new issue of the Weakly, and it was written by the elderly and always-eccentric Keith Haugen, who said (in part): "I thoroughly enjoyed Kawehi Haug's review. (...) The cover story in last week's Honolulu Weekly is the sort of writing that deserves recognition. I hope Kawehi wins an award for that effort."
Keith also writes "As an old writer and editor, it thrills me to see this quality of writing and editing. It is very refreshing."
Keith Haugen is probably the only person who found that attack on Burl to be "thrilling."

I also found it interesting that in Chris Haire's "Media Watch" column he mentions Ian Lind's blog (on a different topic). Since he's well aware of that blog, he undoubtedly saw Burl's response there regarding the Merrie Monarch coverage, which I quoted in an earlier post here. Burl's explanation was on Ian's blog well before the Weakly published their attack. Why, then, was Burl's explanation not included or even mentioned in the Weakly's attack, since the Weakly editor had already seen it?

[damontucker]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

So I just picked up this weeks weekly.

Cover Story: "Potty Training: Five ways to keep sweage out of the water" By Stuart Coleman

And it shows a Picture of the ala wai with some photoshopped shopping carts as well as a creature holding them....

I wonder if anyone sent letters to the editors slamming the article...which they just simply didn't print?

And talk about a waste of Newsprint...or err... filler w/ no point, The last page was a 3/4 page photo of a homeless guy!!! With the title "Public Access"

Manoa

[LikaNui]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

One Letter... Praising the Weeklys Last issue and the write up of they had on the Merrie Monarch... interesting quote from her (...) Then later down shes quoted as saying...

"Her"? "She"? Um, Manoa... KEITH Haugen was the letter writer. His wife Carmen is a "her" and a "she", but.

[Pinball]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

No need to apologize. I didn't get that impression from you at all, nor did I see anyone else here say anything negative about Wanda.

You're right. Very few people here lack the class to attack writers by name, but I do think that a neutral reader, knowing that Wanda wrote the MM pieces for the Advertiser, could easily consider Burl's "hellbent on fawning" (from Ian's site) and "in-the-know boosterism" remarks as indirect digs on her work, even if it was his intent to simply criticize the Advertiser in general. We may not care for either Wanda or Burl's particular approaches to the MM stories, but no one should doubt that they both busted their butts to get a very difficult job done. My particular disappointment with Burl's piece is that it fell short of what I usually expect from him. I appreciate him trying to take a different approach, especially if he was writing to an outside audience, but he's already demonstrated with his military history pieces that he knows how to write from a position of knowledge/authority and still make his stories interesting and accessible to out-of-the-know readers -- without resorting to the cloying/faux-ignorant tone that he used for the MM piece.

All that said, the HW attack was weak and uncalled-for, another example of the "we're noble because we're smaller; you're evil because you're bigger" ethic. Hey, that sounds familiar...

[LikaNui]

Re: So what's up with the Weakly?

Saw the cover of this week's issue, looking like it was a Halloween edition. Some fantasy article by Chris Haire in it about 'Terror Island', which I might read if I get bored this weekend.

Interesting comment today here on Ian Lind's blog where he writes:

Whither the Weekly? One reader offered up this critical comment:

"The Weekly seems to have decided to fill a nitch for the college-to-age-30 clubbers and the Mad Magazine set. That's my take. If that's the case, I wish publisher Laurie Carlson would say so.
"My wish always was to have the Weekly be the paper that pinpricked the establishment. It did that for many years with writer Robert Rees. He was our greatest alternative-press writer, although we on the longer side of journalism credentials always found his articles flush with bad facts and personal invective. Remember: he wasn't writing a column of opinion. He was passing the material off as objective journalism. It seldom was. But boy, did we all want to see what he'd have to say the next week!
"The Weekly's new editor, Chris Haire, is a bit of Toad of Toad Hall. It seems he writes most of the paper and edits the paper. I wonder what publisher Carlson thought of his "Island of the Dead" script in the current issue? I've always seen Carlson as wanting a paper high on respect, not something geared to the "Mad" crowd and drawing mostly bar, mystics and lonely hearts ads. She's a smart lady and has, on occasion, led the Weekly ahead of the dailies."

[LikaNui]

Re: So what's up with the Weakly?

Interesting item in Ian Lind's blog today following up on the Weakly. There are comments from a few of his readers, including this one about us here at HT:
"It's amazing how often I've read comments on Hawaii Threads complaining that the Weekly reports only on other media organizations in town, that we are more concerned about criticizing other reporters than reporting our own news stories. Seriously, do you read the paper?"
The writer of that comment was none other than Weakly Editor Chris Haire.
So, according to his own words he does read Hawaii Threads. That begs the obvious question of why he never responds here. Hmmmmm...

[timkona]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

Did the Weekly buy the Hawaii Island Journal?

The quality of the HIJ has dropped considerably since Lane Wick left.

[Marshall Field]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

I’ve been silent about the Weekly for several weeks now. Why bother commenting, you know. It never gets any better. It’s the same old half-hearted attempts at reporting as the week before and the week before that and the week before that. Even worse, it’s the same old ego-fest. Chris Haire, this, and Chris Haire, that. Who else writes for this thing? It’d be better off if they just ran wire copy or picked up a couple of the columns out of MidWeek.

His attempts at commentary are growing increasingly laughable. He thinks L. Ron Hubbard is a great man. What? The guy must be a scientologist or something. What other explanation could there be. And surely not the kind of person we need leading our not-so venerable, or is that venerealable, weekly.

Of course, Media Watch isn’t the only thing Chris Haire writes. There’s also Quick Hits. If it isn’t Charles Djou this, it’s Akaka bill that, all the while he blathers on and on about sewage spills and homelessness. Look, homelessness is a problem, but it’s not our problem. It’s the problem of the people who send their homeless here. As for the sewers, that’s not our problem either. It’s the problem of all the tourists that come here. That’s the real sewage spill. I say it’s time for a clean up. We need to stop the highrises, tear down the hotels and ship the homeless back to whatever mainland alley they crawled out of.

His usual brand of egotistical inepitude was unmatched this week with that dreadful zombie piece. We get it. We get. You think you’re the next, I don’t know, Monty Python or something. At least he could write a funny scene every now and then. (That bunny thing cracks me up every time.) It was just tasteless and pointless. I can’t believe they even ran it. Oh how that rag continues to get worse and worse.

And what sort of gutless hack refuses to respond to our questions. Like LikaNui said, we know he comes here, but not once has he has responded or has he…GotChew anyone? It’s not like we have an ax to grind or anything. It’s not like we don’t understand what goes on at the Weekly. I’m sure he’d get our deepest sympathies if he’d just come crawling down from of whatever ivory tower trash heap he hides in.

But all of that is neither here nor there. I think the Weekly can be saved.

My suggestions:
Bring back Ted Rall
Ditch Red Meat, that just isn’t funny
Ditch the Media Column. All it does is tick people off.
Start writing about the good things here, not the bad, and quit being such a d**k about everything. It’s not becoming and it speaks of a juvenile, uneducated mind. I want groups to support, causes to rally around, not rehashed bits of news for, as Lika, put it, the “college-to-age-30 clubbers and Mad Magazine set.” If they don’t have the attention spans to pick up the dailies, then screw them.
No more of that blasted rap music. I don’t see ghettos here. This isn’t New York. This isn’t East LA. This is Hawaii. No one listens to that here.
Nightshift. Ha. Let’s run a column just so some hip bars downtown will advertise. Crap.
Books. Bring back books.
Add a New Age section.
Add more environmental coverage.
Add News of the Weird.
Add a keiki column for all of us with kids or grandkids.
And hire some writers. I’d be more than happy to lend a hand, as I’m sure some of the folks here would.

This is our community, and the Weekly is a part of that community. Let’s make it ours. Who’s with me? They’re obviously desperate for writers. If not us, who?

[Kalihiboy]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

ALOT of people listen to rap around here, it is the ONLY music I hear when either someone's window is down at a traffic stop or you can hear the BOOO...BOOM...BOOM noise coming from their cars literally blocks away.

Quite frankly I never hear Sinatra or Metallica sounds coming out of cars anymore.....

KalihiBoy

[lavagal]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

ALOT of people listen to rap around here, it is the ONLY music I hear when either someone's window is down at a traffic stop or you can hear the BOOO...BOOM...BOOM noise coming from their cars literally blocks away.

Quite frankly I never hear Sinatra or Metallica sounds coming out of cars anymore.....

KalihiBoy

Most unfortunate! Right now I'm listening to the Bo Keys. I NEVER hear that coming from a car. But maybe the people who listen to the music I like don't feel the need to impose it on others.

[Erika Engle]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

ALOT of people listen to rap around here, it is the ONLY music I hear when either someone's window is down at a traffic stop or you can hear the BOOO...BOOM...BOOM noise coming from their cars literally blocks away.

Quite frankly I never hear Sinatra or Metallica sounds coming out of cars anymore.....

KalihiBoy

Because when I'm blasting Frank or Andrea Bocelli or the Metallica boys, or Joe Walsh, Los Lonely Boys, or Tito Puente, or (etc. etc.) my windows are usually rolled up so I can enjoy it by myself.

[Erika Engle]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

ALOT of people listen to rap around here, it is the ONLY music I hear when either someone's window is down at a traffic stop or you can hear the BOOO...BOOM...BOOM noise coming from their cars literally blocks away.

Quite frankly I never hear Sinatra or Metallica sounds coming out of cars anymore.....

KalihiBoy

Because when I'm blasting Frank or Andrea Bocelli or the Metallica boys, or Joe Walsh, Los Lonely Boys, or Tito Puente, or (etc. etc.) my windows are usually rolled up so I can enjoy it by myself.

Also, I don't want somebody else's blasted (c)rap music harshing my musical buzz. If it ain't the Sugarhill Gang, I don't really care to hear it coming from someone else's car.

[lavagal]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

Erika. Points taken! Twice! @

[tutusue]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

Because when I'm blasting Frank or Andrea Bocelli or the Metallica boys, or Joe Walsh, Los Lonely Boys, or Tito Puente, or (etc. etc.) my windows are usually rolled up so I can enjoy it by myself.

Quite often the rap devotees windows are rolled up, too. That's when you HEAR and FEEL the boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom (see...one of 'em just drove down Farrington Hwy.)!

They couldn't possibly hear a siren, even if the vehicle was tailgating them.

Now...back on topic...no comment on the Weekly as I don't read it!

[Erika Engle]

Re: So what's up with the Weekly?

Sorry about the double-post. It was unintentional.
.. but thanks, Lavagal!