 Welcome to ThinkTech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Raya Salter. In our show this time we'll go to Kaimo Key and visit the offices of Civil Beat, a leading digital news media organization in and about Hawaii. We'll meet the editors, reporters and staff of Civil Beat and find out who they are and what they're doing. Our ThinkTech on the street host, Marcia Joyner, along with our on-the-street camera operator Ian Davidson went to Civil Beat's office on a given Friday afternoon and did the rounds. Marcia talked with Civil Beat's editor and general manager Patty Epler, managing editor Jim Simon, editorial editor and reporter Chad Blair, Washington and federal reporter Kirsten Downey and a host of other reporters and staff who were there that day all an impressive lot. Marcia made her way through the office and learned a lot about who Civil Beat is, where it lives and what it does. An interesting tour and some very interesting conversations. So let's take a look at the footage of the tour and Marcia's interviews. Civil Beat is a nonprofit news organization and our goal is to help make Hawaii a better place through investigative reporting, explanatory stories and just keeping people informed about the issues and events that they should be paying attention to. Civil Beat has been in existence since 2010 and in last year, a year ago, we converted from a for-profit to a non-profit. So now we're a non-profit news organization. Yeah, I think people are really, really excited to support a non-profit news organization more so than they were a for-profit news organization because I think it gives them some, you know, they're invested then in the stories and in what we're doing and in the kind of news coverage that we're doing. And because of that, I think we're starting to see ourselves more as a community partner or a community asset rather than just here's what happened on Thursday, read it, you know, I think we're trying to figure out other ways that we can help the community such as Anthony Quintano, who's our really excellent social media editor. He has developed a training that he's been giving to any non-profit that asks for free. He'll go talk to them for an hour about how they can make their social media operation better. It doesn't have anything to do with us, but it's just a skill we have or something that we've developed that we can share with others. So we're trying to find more things like that. The website is free to anyone who wants to access it. All of our content is free since we became a non-profit. So Chad was just on KITV last night talking about one of my stories that I am doing on the Honolulu Rail project, going around talking to people that need to live and work around the rail line. And the last story was on Waipahu businesses and how the rail has affected them. A lot of them, you know, no surprise it's the construction has dropped a lot of their sales, but you know, a lot of the businesses are hopeful that the customers are going to come back and hopefully the road might do some good things for them. So for example, I was speaking to a barbershop owner. If you're familiar with non-dings of bakery, they make great Spanish rolls. She went from having around 140 customers a day. And when the rail construction came through Waipahu, Long Farrington Highway, the number got cut down to just around 50. She also lost some of her barbers because they weren't making the same amount of money as well. In fact, she wasn't even living here. She actually lived in Nevada because she ran a couple of other barbershops, but she moved back here to do whatever she could to save her business. Yeah, this is a part of a series that Civil Beat is doing. You know, us and a lot of other news organizations have covered the politics and all that stuff surrounding rail, but what we're really getting into now is the human stories behind what's going on here in Honolulu. And here we've also been recording our offshore series, award-winning podcast series, Race, Politics, made of Hawaiians. So we went ahead and purchased this nearly soundproof studio to do all our work here because the buses can be really noisy along Waila Avenue. Well, there's no topic right here, but today Stuart was on. That was him eating over there. You probably had him in the background, and he was talking about a rail again. What's the better route to go? Is it the general excise tax? Is it the transit accommodation tax? Do we look at property taxes? And his story looks particular how GET is regressive, and it hurts a lot of the more lower income, middle income folks. And so maybe that's not the best way to go. The point of this story was really to discuss there's no perfect way. Each of these taxes has a problem associated with it. You have the general excise tax, which is sort of hidden so people don't really realize it, but it's also very unfair. It's a regressive tax, the most regressive. You've got the property tax, which is less regressive, but people will see it more clearly as on their bill. And finally you've got the hotel tax, the transit and accommodation tax, and that's on our big industry. The tax is already high, so the legislature's going to have a tough decision to make. And that's what I wrote about, and that's what I talked about today. I help oversee the news operation and set some of our long-term priorities, edit a lot of stories. And Civil Beat is the kind of place where everybody sort of chips in and does a lot of different sorts of things. But I get involved in helping develop stories, edit stories, work with reporters, and help Patty set some of our long-term strategy. What is your relationship with Omiodar? Does he ever be here? Does he have any input into what you do? Well, on a day-to-day level, he doesn't play a significant role in giving us direct input. He has a lot of different interests, as you can imagine. And his office is right next door, and so he is, we're now a non-profit, but obviously much of our funds comes from the Omiodar network. But he funds a lot of media efforts and freedom of the press efforts and supporting local journalism all around the country. But he remains the biggest backer of Civil Beat. But he's not heavily involved in day-to-day operations. He is the head of the board. I am reading a little bit more about back-end database stuff, so how to manage our membership information and think it with the events that we have coming up. Well, I work with Ben Nishimoto and we are the development or philanthropy team. And we are growing our kind of grassroots support and all the contributed aspects of revenue that supports Civil Beat. So grant, major gifts, and we also do all of the events and engagement. Anthony Quintano, I'm the engagement editor for Omiodar Civil Beat, and a lot of people don't know what that is. I was getting my, so what is it that you're engaging? Our readers and anybody pretty much online. I manage our social from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube to Snapchat, Instagram, you name it. And so I'm always kind of, this is what the this screen is, is this is Twitter. So I kind of look at this. So I use, this is called TweetDeck and I kind of watch Twitter to see what's going on. Yeah. And it allows me to actually see Twitter much bigger than just using Twitter.com and monitor different conversations at the same time. So you'll actually see these columns shift and move while I'm sitting here. But yeah, part of my job is to monitor and see who's talking to us and see people, see updates from things that are going on around Hawaii and around the world. Yeah. So I do, I follow a number of journalists across the world and a number of them in DC who cover Trump. So it tends to fill up my feet a bit. Yeah, definitely. But me and my colleague Landis, who sits across from me, we both monitor conversations across platforms. We do live streaming, which I think that what you're doing right now is streaming. So we stream a lot on Facebook live. We actually have what's called office hours in one hour where we do a live stream to talk to our readers and answer questions and invite reporters on and talk to them and stuff like that. In general, I'm a reporter covering immigration stuff and also criminal justice issues and I have covered quite a bit of homelessness in the past, although I haven't done that so much lately. Well, the homeless issue is so big and it changes from minute to minute. How do you keep up with that? That was something that, you know, you just have to go out there and talk to people and, you know, talk to the folks who are actually going out and doing the help. So that was something I was, you know, I was doing quite a bit. You know, what we do at The Civil Beat basically is kind of, you know, tell the story from the policy level and see how that impacts everyday people like there. So I will have some stories, ideas that way and then go talk to them and how that impacts them. So, you know, it's not like I'm just telling you like, Hey, what happened to you today? That sort of story. But like, you know, so this is sweep is about to happen. You know, how does that impact you? I make and for the editorials, I'll make the illustrations for those two. Yeah. So I have a series of cartoons based around the Honolulu bus system. It's not necessarily about the bus. So right now I'm writing a little story about this person who is on a search to figure out where Circle Island is. So it's kind of like a mystery thriller cartoon. I am working on a story about Aloha Harvest, which is a really great nonprofit that's actually just up the road. And they collect unused food from restaurants and farms and stuff like that. And they deliver it to people that can give it to the homeless. I was told some time ago that the issue was being sued. And the health department was worried that if they collected food and somebody got sick, they'd be sued. Is that issue resolved? Yeah. To my understanding, that's not an issue. There's actually something, a federal law called the Bill Emerson Goods-Maritan Act. And it makes it so that nonprofits can't be sued for delivering food. And people might get like a foodborne illness or something. But they've told me that they've actually never had that happen anyway. So there's a bill going through City Council right now that's trying to make it so that restaurants are not required to, but encouraged to donate more of their food. So I'm working on a video and a story about Mokauea Island, which is an island off of Sand Island near Honolulu Harbor. Now, what is special about that island? Well, it's known as Aloha's last native Hawaiian fishing village. And it's sort of an odd place for, you know, a fishing village because it's, you know, you've got the airport, you know, the state's largest airport, this industrial port, Kehi Lagoon, right? So it's a very industrial area. And then you have this sort of environmental and cultural preservation work going on on an island just off the coast. So they, there are people who live there. There are two families who still live out there. And in the 70s, there was this big struggle against the state. There were many more people living out there sort of practicing this subsistence fishing lifestyle, and the state tried to evict them. And there was a big struggle. And this came at a time when there were a lot of other eviction struggles in the 1970s. And the residents in this case won, and we're granted a lease. The lease actually is only for 65 years, and it expires in 26 years. So there's some sort of like remaining tension about what's going to happen, but for now they live out there. Right now I'm working on a story about just a process of recruiting and challenges of recruiting and retaining teachers here. Have you been here at Hawaii at Civil Beat? About a month. Oh, so this is all new. How long have you been in Hawaii? At the same time, about a month. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's all a learning process. And surely for anyone moving here, there's quite a lot of ground to cover. Discovered about the new teachers. How about the new superintendent? She hasn't come here yet, so we're eager to hear her thoughts on what she plans to do and her goals and her background. And I know a lot of people are looking forward to her coming and what she hopes to accomplish here. We are in our eighth year, if you can believe that. I'm the only original person still around. You were asking about whether Pierre ever was around. In the first two years, he was here every day, all day. In fact, I'm actually sitting where he sat. He was completely hands-on. It was an internet startup. And the night of the tsunami, for example, in Japan, the nuclear disaster, he worked all night. So did Randy Ching, who helps set this up, another eBay survivor. And but somewhere along the way, we grew up to be on our own. And since then, the staff has expanded. And we have also switched from a for-profit status. And he heard earlier to a non-profit. And I think that's an indication that Pierre wants this to stick around longer. We have a regular contributor from Maui. And we have two regular contributors from the Big Island. We have someone on Kauai who has contributed. And we're trying to, I believe, secure that on a more regular basis. Initially, it was Honolulu Civil Beat. Still is. And that was the focus. But we've come to recognize how important it is to include the neighbor islands. We will occasionally run something from somebody written somewhere else on the mainland, other news organizations. We'll occasionally run the Associated Press article when we can't cover something ourselves. But very much we rely on this very core staff. And it's pretty much all original content. We don't run a lot of wire stories. Kirsten Downey, a former Washington Post reporter, she divides her time between here and D.C. And she very much reports on the federal level, Hawaii, the delegation, issues that are of interest to us, military spending, healthcare, as you know, that's a big deal right now. And very much a terrific addition to have, to have somebody in D.C. on a regular basis. Because local news organizations have cut back on that. And the Star Advertiser doesn't have anybody there anymore. At least I don't think they do. So that's a good investment on how much we seriously consider what goes on in D.C. to be important back here. I'm the federal government reporter here at Civil Beat. And as you are all aware, you know, we've had a lot more to cover in the last six months than we'd had in a while. The change of administrations has made a great many changes. And there's, I really view my job here as watching out for how any changes in federal policy will have an effect on Hawaii, try to flag things as they appear. But people know what's going on. And if there's anything that can be done to either support or resist. But one of the things that's a very big challenge is that the Trump, Trump as a, as a person is so volatile. And much that he does results in a lot of personality driven reporting and discussion appropriately. So for those who are covering his administration, you might say in the front row seats, my feeling about this has been that we need to watch not just what he says, but what he actually does and what the Trump administration actually does and what is happening in Congress. So I've been much more focused on how specific things affect us. With such a difficult and controversial president as Donald Trump, a number of people are all looking for different ways to respond to his administration. And what I've decided to do is focus on sort of the, the core issues to us here in Hawaii and look at how they're being affected. So the things that I've been looking at most closely are healthcare, the environment, education, military procurement, both the ways the military is advantageous to us in Hawaii economically, and also ways as taxpayers and as citizens that we can be concerned about things the military is doing here and overseas. There's about a hundred thousand people in Hawaii that benefited from the extension of Medicaid that happened through the Affordable Care Act, which people call Obamacare. So about a hundred thousand people could be adversely affected if either the House or Senate revisions to the health, to that healthcare plan go forward. So we're looking right now to see exactly what that would mean. As Patty Epler told us, Civil Beat is dedicated to cultivating an informed body of citizens and striving to make Hawaii a better place. It does this by investigative, watchdog, and in-depth reporting, analysis, and commentary to give us better insight into community issues. eBay philanthropist Pierre Omidyar launched Civil Beat in 2010 as a digital platform beyond print or television media. In 2016, to expand its reach, Civil Beat became a nonprofit and now provides its reporting free to the public. It is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a group of nonprofit media organizations across the country. Beside its website, civilbeat.org, Civil Beat emails its daily Morning Beat newsletter to thousands of subscribers. It also holds public events, including civil cafes and Hawaii storytellers, and its Facebook page hosts community conversations and debates. Civil Beat's long-term goal is to produce journalism with a purpose and to stimulate positive change. It does not align itself with any political or special interest groups and adheres to strict journalistic standards and ethics. As indicated on its website, Civil Beat believes news is a public asset. It wants to be a community partner, not just an observer, and it believes it has a stake in the community, just as the community has a stake in it. Thanks to Patty Epler and the reporters and staff at Civil Beat for the tour and for being so open and answering our questions about Civil Beat and its coverage. We enjoyed the good feeling we found there, and we'll read Civil Beat with even more interest now that we've seen where and how it is made. Indeed, in the eight years since its inception, Civil Beat has become a cornerstone of the news media in Hawaii. We are lucky to have it free every day. It's an extraordinary public service. Unfortunately, the country's president, Donald Trump, is at war with the media and the facts, and regularly attacks media and reporters who are critical of his administration. This undermines the media and confuses the public, which needs to be able to trust the media to fairly report the news. Trump's ongoing war against the media threatens not only the media, but the nation itself. The First Amendment and therefore the Constitution are in jeopardy, and now more than ever, we need responsible news organizations to be courageous and keep us properly informed. News organizations like Civil Beat are more important these days, and we should treat them with greater appreciation. They are central to our democracy, both nationally and locally. Want to know more about Civil Beat or see their latest stories? Check out civilbeat.org. If you want to subscribe to their daily newsletters, you can sign up there. And now, let's take a look at our ThinkTech counter of events going forward. There's so much happening in Hawaii. Sometimes things happen under the radar, and we don't hear much about them. But ThinkTech will take you there. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week to stay current on what's happening in government, industry, academia, and communities around the islands and the world. ThinkTech broadcasts its daily talk shows live on the Internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. If you miss the show, or if you want to replay or share our shows, they're all archived on demand on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube. The audio is on ThinkTechHawaii.com slash radio. And we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. Visit ThinkTechHawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and YouTube links, or sign up on our email list and get the daily docket of our upcoming shows. ThinkTech has a high-tech green screen, first amendment studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to join our live audience or participate in our shows, write to talk at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at ThinkTechHI. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives together in these islands. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. You can call into our talk shows live. While you're watching any of our shows, you can call into 808-374-2014. That's our new phone number. And pose a question or make a comment. And now here's this week's ThinkTech commentary. I'm Parker Wagner, a student at Mid-Pacific. I would like to talk to you today about technology in my school. My generation had to just learn about technology. We accepted and use it in everything. We grew up with technology. We learned to use an iPad even before we could walk. That's awesome. But it comes with a challenge. We cannot opt out. Technology is here to stay. Personally, I love technology. And I feel that Mid-Pac wouldn't be the same had it not integrated technology this way into the classroom. It's not just about learning technology. It's about using technology to learn other subjects. Everyone in school is issued an iPad. And our reading, study, and test materials are accessed mostly online. I read, do my homework, and then turn it in online. I get feedback from my teachers by email. And I upload my assignments. I do collaborative work with other students. And I manage my schedule all on the internet. It's very cool. All of this is teaching us to use technology in a productive and meaningful way. I know other schools have done similar things. But what we do at Mid-Pac is unique. Mid-Pac has many classes with this technology. And they are fun and educational. This gets us ready for the future because it leads us to great career choices such as being a video editor or a producer. I'm so glad Mid-Pac has taken the lead in putting this technology into the classroom. And I'm proud to be a student there. Thanks. I'm Parker Weignold. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of Think Tech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. That wraps up this week's edition of Think Tech. Remember, you can watch Think Tech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. Can't get enough of it, just like Ryan does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more Think Tech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on Think Tech, visit thinktechhawaii.com. Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks for being part of our Think Tech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification, and global awareness in Hawaii. And of course, the media, particularly the digital media, in and serving our community. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Raya Salter. Aloha, everyone.