"Breaking News, Monk Seals and Humans" (Kimo's world #47)

James “Kimo” Rosen is a retired professional photographer 
living in Kapa'a with his best friend Obama Da Dog,
 Rosen also blogs as a hobby...

The enclosed blog is an opinion article I recently sent to the local newspaper, (The Garden Island News) aka (TGI)

Kimo's world #47

Breaking News, Monk Seals and Humans

Dear Editor,

I enjoy reading your paper daily and am thrilled that you brought back the Saturday print edition. 

With that said,I do not understand why TGI  on Sunday December 7,2014 would publish  as the lead story on the front page of the print edition yet  another article on the death of a female Monk seal?
http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/and-growing/article_4882bed4-7dd9-11e4-9364-8bc683a92d0e.html  ($25,000 — and growing)

There have already been 4 front page articles including Sunday's and a few  editorials in the last week on this female endangered  monk seal. Wednesday  featured the story, Thursday, Friday and Sunday featured reward money and the repetitive story.
http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/monk-seal-pup-killed/article_bbcc4a22-7ab4-11e4-9a3a-6b420e7c03a3.html (Monk seal pup killed)

http://thegardenisland.com/news/opinion/editorial/monk-seal-pup-killer-a-coward/article_7a9c6518-7b82-11e4-88c3-b3e7585ee963.html (Monk seal pup killer a coward)

http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/tgi-offers-reward-for-seal-killer/article_de9d7bc8-7c1e-11e4-83c1-a3e0545584f3.html   (TGI offers $10,000 reward for seal killer)

There was a breaking news story from the previous day Saturday December 6,2014 of a major traffic fatality that  took the life of  a man and  closed Kaumualli highway for approximately 3 hours. Causing many hardships, missed appointments, missed air flights , doctors appointments, the list goes on.

Nowhere on the front page of the print edition was there even a box ad at the bottom of the page giving readers a lead of where to go to find this story, instead it was buried inside on page  A-6.

I understand  the death of an endangered species monk seal is major news in Hawai'i, however when a fellow human dies in traffic fatality that should trump a repetitive story of a dead monk seal as the front page headline. 

I freelanced for many years  as a photojournalist and kept a police scanner in my portrait studio. Whenever I would call any editor advising  them I photographed an accident and asked if they were interested in the photos, the first thing they would ask, "were there any fatalities?" If I said no, they were not interested, if i said yes, I had the front page.

Oh, how journalism has changed.

This meme was use on Facebook to promote this blog!

P.S.
This is great, Jimmy Kimmel asked people what is Gluten? Everyone wants Gluten free, but what is it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdJFE1sp4Fw

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