Sunday, November 06, 2011
Star-Advertiser re-appears on Web not for us, but for APEC
by Larry Geller
Aha! I had noticed yesterday that the Star-Advertiser was back on the web (see Star-Advertiser reappears on the Web?, 11/5/2011) (don’t miss the comments). Now we know why (as though we couldn’t guess).
Today they are running this announcement:
Yes, “Everything You Need To Know About APEC USA 2011” and can now actually read on-line. Until APEC is over, it seems. Then they disappear again. It’s not just that “access is free” but that they have temporarily shed their cloak of invisibility.
How embarrassing. Maybe they don’t feel it, but the state administration should. They’re pushing Hawaii as a place to do business, but the one remaining Honolulu newspaper is invisible. Did someone lean on the editors or did they figure it out themselves?
The absence of our one daily paper on the web is part of a fabric that discourages business. It goes along with having no symphony and the reputed poor quality of our schools. Etc. I was not kidding when I suggested that DBEDT might help support the symphony. Well-educated, successful, talented people demand the arts in their quality of life. And I’m not kidding when I suggest that the deliberate withdrawal of our one daily paper suggests a community disconnected from modern reality. Executives notice this.
Either way, the S-A is just a bit late. Most visitors will have done lots of Googling before leaving. They may not find the Star-Advertiser articles anyway due to the way Google works.
More power to Civil Beat. They saw the wisdom of being read, and the contradiction in running a news website that few people could read. May they grow and prosper. And rise in the page rankings. (As long as they don’t put back their paywall, of course. …)
The worldwide invisibility of the only major newspaper in Hawaii is yet another indicator ... not of an anti-business attitude but of a much broader anti-outsider attitude, the attitude that shouts insularity, fearfulness and general backwardness. Most people outside the USA, and quite a few inside it, don't even know that Hawaii is part of the United States. Why? Well, in part because little news comes out of it, except when there is a volcano erupting, a hurricane raging or a world war starting. Hawaii. Timbuktu. Kathmandu. Ultima Thule. Places of utterly no significance, beyond the edge of the known world.
: November 8, 2011 at 7:19:00 PM HST Yes, I fully agree with you. I've tried to get attention to significant events in Hawaii and they are simply ignored. Now our daily newspaper buries us in invisibility.
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