Deserted Islands: A new report on the state of local news came out last week and sadly 127 newspapers said goodbye last year. That left nearly 55 million Americans without access to local news, the Medill Local News Report 2024 say. Those areas are known as news deserts.

The report also includes a good piece about the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s new owner, Carpenter Media Group, gobbling up small news outlets across the country over the past year — a “meteoric pace,” the report calls it, that has made Carpenter the sixth largest newspaper company in the US with 130 newspapers under its corporate belt.

So why, The Sunshine Blog has to ask, is Carpenter firing journalists left and right, including here in Hawaii, as we hear this week. Dennis Francis, the longtime head of Oahu Publications, which owns the Star-Advertiser and most of the neighboring island’s newspapers, said Hawaii News Now that the layoffs “strengthen the company’s financial future.”

Serious? But what about the community? Maybe they should buy less and save more.

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Carpenter hit out at reporters (and newspaper carriers), as it took over operations from Black Press in March, including the entire reporting staff at West Hawaii Today. This week, six more Honolulu journalists received their pink cards, including two veteran photographers — Cindy Ellen Russel and Craig Kojima — and religion reporter Pat Gee. Also on the hit list: Stanley Lee, Richard Couch and Jeremy Nitta. At least six other non-newsroom employees were also let go.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser Guild sent a scathing indictment of the new owners on Tuesday, saying “These losses have deeply affected our ability to continue serving the communities of Hawaii.”

The union claims Carpenter is following “a pattern” of buying a bunch of newspapers, followed by deep cuts at the same newspapers. Similar bloodshed has occurred in Washington state and Oregon in recent months, where Carpenter Media Group has landed.

“Corporate leadership has pledged to invest in us and provide us with new tools to serve our communities,” Guild said. “At the time, our union expressed cautious optimism that new leadership could provide a new opportunity for revitalization. Less than a year into CMG’s leadership, it increasingly appears that talk of valuing workers and investing in the workforce has been empty platitudes.”

“While downsizing reduces costs in the short term, it inevitably limits our ability to serve our community and leads to more disappointed customers canceling their memberships. I’ve seen this again and again. As workers at news organizations across the country continue to work around the clock with limited resources, the corporate vampires continue to suck us in.”

Great Halloween line.

The blog is interested to see what reaction, if any, the other unions in this great union of states will have. Solidarity is easier said than done, right?

At least one civic leader is speaking out. “It’s a corporate firing and it’s as cold as it gets,” former Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who now serves on the University of Hawaii Board of Regents, told Hawaii News Now.

The blog is eagerly awaiting its release the two favorite Oahu Publications newscastersJames and Rose, whose computer-generated selves read the news (badly) each week for The Garden Island, the company newspaper on Kauai. Avatars are the perfect employee – they can work long hours and don’t need money for food or rent. James and Rose can certainly lend a helping hand here on Oahu.

Sticker Shock: Most of us know by now that people who work for public agencies cannot campaign on company time or using public equipment to promote or oppose political candidates.

So a sharp-eyed reader was surprised to see this Trump campaign sticker on a Honolulu Board of Water Supply truck near Kahala Mall on Wednesday. She took a picture that soon found its way into the blog’s inbox.

I contacted BWS to see what was going on. Board of Water Supply spokeswoman Kathleen Pahinui also knows what everyone knows, except perhaps the unfortunate driver of this BWS truck.

“This is a violation of the city’s ethics, and we can’t have that,” Pahinui said. “We need to know which truck.”

She said it may or may not have been placed there by an employee. Someone passing by could have taped it to the side of the truck without the employee noticing.

“We don’t know for sure, all we know is we have to get him out of the truck now,” she said.

Here is the picture. And a hint. The person also likes sunflower seeds and Zesty Ranch flavor, for starters. The blog will let you decide if this perpetrator has good taste in politics or food.

Letting the Light Shine: The chamber level of the Hawaii State Capitol, where staff, visitors, lawmakers, the governor and the LG park their vehicles, has long been a damp and dark place to visit. It doesn’t exactly scream “E komo mai”.

That’s why the Blog was very pleasantly surprised to see the Diamond Head part of the room level (fancy words for “basement”) lit up as bright as day this week. It was so lit that the Blog almost had to wear shades.

The Accounting and General Services Department tells us the change is permanent and the Ewa side of the basement is to receive the same treatment once funding is secured. For now, though, that part is still operational, if a little dark.

Meanwhile, work continues on the reflecting pools above and elsewhere in the Piața Mare building in Beretania while the Legislature is in session.

A sunny day at OHA: The Office of Hawaiian Affairs board decided not to ask the Legislature to remove it from the Sunshine Act, as Civil Beat’s Blaze Lovell reported. was on the table at Thursday’s OHA meeting.

The proposed bill would have granted a blanket exemption to the Board of Trustees from a law designed to keep meetings open to the public. If the board had authorized it, it would have gone to the Legislature in 2025 for further consideration.

However, the decision to allow the public to continue to be full participants in OHA meetings was not made until considerable hand-wringing had taken place.

OHA CEO Stacy Ferreira said the board cannot function effectively under the Sunshine Act.

“It just doesn’t allow our board to effectively and efficiently address the issues that come up not just on the board table, but through the front door every day,” she said at a preliminary hearing Wednesday.

President Carmen Hulu Lindsey said the Sunshine Act prevented more than two trustees from traveling to Kauai to meet with community leaders iwi kupuna in Wainiha.

Supporters have also drawn attention to the Legislature, which is exempt from the open sessions law and is allowed to deliberate behind closed doors.

The blog thanks those community members who have supported transparency and accountability.

“Just because the Legislature does it doesn’t make it right,” Maui County Council member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez said Wednesday.

Spirit.

At Thursday’s meeting, she said OHA and administrators should take time to learn the law’s ins and outs, and that not doing so is akin to “a child refusing to eat vegetables.”

Lu Ann Lankford-Faborito also testified against the Sunshine Law exemption.

“Talking out of public seems a bit secretive,” she said.

Administrator Keli’i Akina said OHA needs to build trust in the community and in the Legislature to move bills and gain support for proposals.

“Accepting the Law of the Sun tells people that we want to be transparent, that we want to be open,” Akina said. “Rejecting the Law of the Sun tells them otherwise.”

Administrator Keoni Souza voted in favor of the bill on Wednesday, but voted against the proposal on Thursday. While he still supports seeking exemptions from the Sunshine Act, he said the testimony of the past two days swayed his vote.

“I feel passionate about certain things until someone brings something to light,” he said.

Which shows that more people need to talk about the things that matter in Hawaii. It seems that sometimes the powers that be actually do listen.