{"id":271,"date":"2014-02-01T21:24:16","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T21:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/EH\/?p=271"},"modified":"2014-02-01T21:24:16","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T21:24:16","slug":"a-journalist-wannabe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=271","title":{"rendered":"A Journalist Wannabe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

For whatever reason (it can\u2019t be the money), Robert Cabin wants to be a journalist as well as a scientist. For now, given the many crimes he has committed against the profession of journalism, he should stick with his day job (associate professor at Brevard College in North Carolina).<\/p>\n

First and foremost, journalists must double-check their sources and statements. Cabin falters on this count. He cites a paper by Mike Tuland (that\u2019s Tulang, actually) and another co-authored by Dina Kafeler (Kageler). He attributes to me a trenchant article on pigs at Hakalau (October 1997\u00a0Environment Hawai`i<\/i>) that was instead written by a journalistic intern working with us that summer (thank you, Sona Pai).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On page 26, he refers to something called the \u201cKilauea State Forest Preserve on the Big Island.\u201d Never heard of it \u2013 nor is it likely even to exist, given that the state has forest reserves (no preserves at all).<\/p>\n

Cabin discusses the hawksbill turtle, an iconic species of Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park. \u201cAs far as we know,\u201d he writes, \u201cit regularly nests only in the Hawaiian Islands.\u201d Actually, hawksbills, though endangered, are globally distributed.<\/p>\n

In discussing the gorse infestation on Mauna Kea and what to do about it, Cabin disparages burns, since that would also mean \u201cdestroying any co-occurring native species.\u201d It beggars belief to think that any native plants have managed to hold on in light of two centuries of depredations by sheep, goats, cattle \u2013 and, of course, gorse itself, which pretty much crowds out any other plant that might have the temerity to try to \u201cco-occur.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the record, birds are vertebrates.<\/p>\n

Journalists should also be wary of using and abusing the freedoms afforded by the parenthetical phrase.<\/p>\n

First rule: for every open paren, you need a close paren. Second one: avoid putting one parenthetical statement inside another. Both rules are violated in this passage (from page 107): \u201cWhen the volunteers reconvened beneath a spreading\u00a0kauila<\/i>\u00a0(a rare native tree in the buckthorn family that produces exceptionally dense, hard wood that the Hawaiians used to make\u00a0kapa<\/i>\u00a0(cloth) beaters, vicious spears (ihe<\/i>) and poles for construction inside the ten-acre exclosure, another Hawaiian man blew the\u00a0pu`ole`ole<\/i>\u00a0(conch shell) once for each of the four cardinal directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

At times, the parenthetical statements add an unintended soup\u00e7on of humor to a volume where levity is otherwise scarce or forced. There\u2019s this, from page 113: \u201cHe explained that shortly after my last visit, they had hand sown over a million\u00a0`a`ali`i<\/i>\u00a0(Dodonaea viscose<\/i>, a relatively common and hardy indigenous shrub in the soapberry family) seeds.\u201d And this, from page 146: \u201cI walked over and stood beneath a remnant old\u00a0lama<\/i>\u00a0(Diospyros sandwicensis<\/i>, a member of the ebony family that produces edible persimmons and very hard wood that the Hawaiians fashioned into rafters and traps for deep ocean fish; they also pulverized the wood and mixed it with other materials to make compresses for the treatment of skin sores).\u201d<\/p>\n

Certainly the most serious of Cabin\u2019s journalistic crimes is plagiarism. In an email that arrived several days before the book, Cabin gave me fair warning: \u201cI wanted to let you know that my original manuscript included an extensive annotated bibliography that allowed me to carefully document and give proper credit to all of the sources I used to write this book.\u201d He then puts the blame on the publisher for keeping him from doing this: \u201cUH didn\u2019t feel this was appropriate for this kind of book, and thus had me replace this with a more informal, unannotated bibliography.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m bringing this up because \u2026 I heavily relied on your various writings about Hakalau in several sections of Part I\u2026 As an author\/budding journalist myself, I\u2019ve become more sensitive to such issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, he did rely heavily on material that was published by Environment Hawai`i. To give but one example, compare what Pai wrote in her article, \u201cAt Hakalau Refuge, Hunter Pressure Overrides Conservationists\u2019 Concerns\u201d (Environment Hawai`i<\/i>, October 1997), to Cabin\u2019s text (in italics):<\/p>\n

\u201cFencing of the HFNWR\u2019s first management unit, the 550-acre Middle Honohina unit, was completed in 1988. Feral ungulate control on the refuge had officially begun. In 1989, a group of professional hunters from Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park came to the refuge to eradicate pigs and cattle from the unit. Following a concerted hunting effort that removed nearly all cattle and most pigs, snares were set within the unit and along the boundary to catch any animals that may have eluded the hunters. Two wild cows, 11 feral pigs, and two feral dogs were eliminated by the snares. The unit was then declared ungulate-free.\u201d<\/p>\n

The refuge began by fencing a 550-acre mid-elevation subunit in 1988, employing professional hunters to systematically kill the pigs and cattle within this unit in 1989, and relying thereafter on snares to catch any remaining fugitives. After subsequently killing a few feral cows, pigs, and dogs, the snares stayed unsprung and the unit was declared ungulate-free.<\/i><\/p>\n

Altogether, pages 24-25 and 31-32 are lifted, with a few tweaks, from material previously published in this newsletter.<\/p>\n

Much of the book is made up of long first-person accounts of his travels and experiences across the islands (including a description of a naked romp in Limahuli \u2013 TMI!). It is hard to argue that these are fabricated, and I won\u2019t, but much of the extensive dialogue he includes just doesn\u2019t sound right to anyone familiar with conversational English (much less Hawaiian pidgin).<\/p>\n

For example, Cabin is describing an episode in which he, an overworked scientist, is trying to plug his overtime into a computer. Two field technicians, both \u201clocals,\u201d pull his leg by telling him to use a special code they developed for just such occasions. \u201cI assure you this is a really important code for people who work the kind of hours you do,\u201d one of them informs Cabin. They then \u201claugh heartily\u201d and leave Cabin to figure it out. Probably something like this happened, but the dialogue is wince-worthy.<\/p>\n

The book is replete with chuckles, hearty laughter, people saying things \u201cmatter of factly,\u201d and just about every other trite phrase used by writers thinking they are being colorful when they\u2019re just grasping at clich\u00e9s.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For whatever reason (it can’t be the money), Robert Cabin wants to be a journalist as well as a scientist. For now, given the many crimes he has committed against the profession of journalism, he should stick with his day … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-july-2013","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}