As a reader of this blog, one may have noticed that the post which went up on the 13th of April had been taken down the next day. If you were one of the select people I reached out to and sent a link to, you would have gotten a note from me that said that I pulled the article down.
The article was entitled “A first look at ‘24”. Based on the record at the State of Hawaii Office of Elections, it was about the initial notices by candidates that may potentially run for elected office in Hawaii.
About 24 hours after I posted the piece, I got a note from a fellow pundit whom I respect, saying that the piece was full of errors, highlighting a few of them as factual errors among other errors. Choosing not to fix it online I took it down
And indeed, it was full of errors. Some of it had to do with the categorization of the candidate, whether they have “pulled papers” or “filed” to be on the ballot. I didn’t delineate that in the first piece. Secondly, I misassigned a candidate from one race to another.
And the errors went on and on.
But instead of giving up on the piece, I felt its important enough to salvage. So, over the last 2 days, I have been rebuilding it, making sure it’s factual and, this time, having another pundit read it over just to be sure I am correct.
To those who took the time to let me know of the errors thank you. To those who read over my drafts and gave me ideas to make it even better, I thank you too. The effort to “get it right” is always challenging, especially with data-rich pieces like this. This one was no exception, and even more due to the volume of data I needed to get right.
But for my first effort, I will be straight with you. – I wrote a sloppy piece that should have never seen the light of “e-day” (when it gets published on the website). And I am happy that I got called out, forcing me to take it down.
The piece is now re-written and will be published on the website tomorrow night, Wednesday, the 17th of April. Should there be more factual errors, please let me know through the response page on the website.
As for the points of view I have made on races, those will stay. After all, it is a political column which I call as I see it. I’ll also write about other races such as specific county council and mayoral races in my next piece around the 27th of April. And then I’ll do it all again after the filing deadline in June, to see who will be on the ballots.
But I’ll try not to be sloppy, remembering the lessons I learned when I worked at a newspaper (Pacific Business News), and regain your trust that what I present is factually correct.