When they watch or listen to local media, they don\u2019t often see or hear themselves and their communities reflected. They included us in that criticism: \u201cI like the Civil Beat newsletter, but it rarely has stuff that\u2019s pertinent to the Big Island,\u201d one of them wrote. That\u2019s not surprising since currently most of our reporters, like a majority of Hawai\u02bbi journalists, are based on O\u02bbahu.<\/p>\n
In short, our neighbors feel ignored most of the time and they are not happy about that. Many of them worry that if no one is watching their local governments, businesses and organizations, bad things can fester \u2014 maybe even are festering<\/a> without them knowing.<\/p>\n They haven\u2019t given up hope, though. They still trust local news at relatively high levels \u2014 higher than national news. They just want us to pay more attention to them, which is exactly what we plan to do, guided in part by these new survey results.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most of the survey respondents\u2019 concerns sound familiar, with some unique twists. They said housing needs, local politics and attacks on the environment need more scrutiny. They also are afraid of being ill-prepared for natural disasters and whether their fragile infrastructure \u2014 roads, energy, water and waste systems \u2014 will survive them, with the Big Island of course adding volcanic eruption to the list of threats. Big Island respondents consistently were more worried about the fate of farming while those from Kaua\u02bbi ranked destruction from development and tourism higher.\u00a0<\/p>\n They told us about the scenarios that keep them up at night. One Kaua\u02bbi resident expressed fears about the rising cost of living \u201csqueezing out locals and Hawaiians in favor of rich transplants.\u201d One Hawai\u02bbi island resident summed up the health care access barriers cited by many others, saying, \u201cI\u2019m concerned that we can\u2019t get the care we need as we age and will return to the mainland for needed care.\u201d<\/p>\n The survey by News Revenue Hub also exposed a mismatch between what people say they want and what they are getting. In-depth coverage that helps people better understand and participate in their communities was a common desire, yet an analysis of hyperlocal media on the two islands found it dominated by basic information drawn from press releases or other kinds of public announcements. Many of the topics people said they most care about are overshadowed by reporting on crime and sports, two areas they ranked at the bottom of their interests.<\/p>\n These survey results reaffirm our decision to step up our neighbor island coverage in the coming years with the hub-and-spoke strategy that I outlined in a recent column<\/a>. We have national seed money<\/a> in hand and are seeking local matching support to keep it going.<\/p>\n Our goal is twofold: Lean into the issues that already connect everyone who lives in Hawai\u02bbi and ferret out the unique stories and problems emerging from each of the islands \u2014 issues that should concern all of us as residents of the same state. Separation by ocean is no excuse for turning our backs on our neighbors.<\/p>\n Success will take vision, consistency and, yes, more journalists focused on the neighbor islands. With that in mind, we\u2019ve started hiring.\u00a0<\/p>\n Taylor N\u0101hulukeaokalani Cozloff, a Kamehameha Schools Kap\u0101lama grad who is finishing her journalism degree at New York\u2019s New School, will be based on Hawai\u02bbi island. She interned for us last summer<\/a> and will become our first-ever engagement reporter, a fancy word for someone who plans to use social media and events to more deeply connect with the community in her reporting. Taylor was born and raised on O\u02bbahu, with extensive family on the Big Island where her grandmother is from. In the new year, we\u2019ll be launching a Hawai\u02bbi island newsletter similar to the one we already send out weekly on Maui, so sign up for that here<\/a>. Expect to find Taylor at Civil Beat events and community meetings around the island starting in January.<\/p>\n Noelle Fujii-Oride<\/a>, our new Kaua\u02bbi reporter, may be a familiar name to many since she has been covering stories in Hawai\u02bbi for more than a decade. A former Civil Beat intern, Noelle worked at Hawaii Business Magazine for seven years until May 2024, when she became the inaugural editor of Overstory<\/a>, a statewide issues-oriented online news site. She\u2019s also a longtime board member and past president of the Hawai\u02bbi chapter of AAJA, the Asian American Journalists Association. A Bay Area native, Noelle came to the University of Hawai\u02bbi for college, where she met her husband. They now live in L\u012bhu\u02bbe, his hometown, and her twin sister and parents live on O\u02bbahu. Watch for Noelle\u2019s contributions after she joins us in mid-January.<\/p>\n I hope you\u2019ll welcome both Taylor and Noelle as we embark on this new journey to better connect our islands. We\u2019re confident that together, we\u2019ll be stronger.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sign up for our FREE morning newsletter and face each day more informed.<\/p>\n Sign Up<\/p>\n \n Sorry. That’s an invalid e-mail.\n <\/p>\n \n Thanks! We’ll send you a confirmation e-mail shortly.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A clear longing for more local media coverage emerged from our recent survey of Kaua\u02bbi and the Big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-331012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/250609-dc-Interns-TaylorCozloff-1906-1024x1024.jpg\")
Taylor N\u0101hulukeaokalani Cozloff<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Noelle-Fujii-Oride-1024x1024.jpeg\")
Noelle Fujii-Oride<\/p>\n![\"Civil](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1753322412_339_logo10.png\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n