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So what did you miss?

One of the things I appreciate about working at an online news service is that the stories seem to have a life of their own. When I was editor of a daily newspaper in Denver, once a story was published, it felt like it was behind us. It was over. And if readers missed it, too bad.

That’s far from the case at Civil Beat.

Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about from this week, and why I think that our approach on the web serves you better.

Campaign Finance

Monday was the big day for state races, the deadline for campaigns to file their reports detailing contributions and expenditures for the first six months of this year. Our first task was to get you the numbers, fast. Those dollar figures can tell you a lot about the status of a race. So throughout the day Noelle Chun and Robert Brown updated stories on the governor, mayor and prosecutor races as new information popped up on the state’s . But we didn’t stop there. After the first rush of numbers, we probed deeper to show you what those reports revealed about the state of politics in Hawaii. We published eight stories in all, with at least one more still to come. (Guess which governor candidate Willie Nelson gave $5,000?) We’re going to be all over what’s known as the mother’s milk of politics — money.

• Hannemann Leading Governor Fundraising Race
• Caldwell on Top In Mayor Fundraising Race
• Pacarro Has Fundraising Lead in Prosecutor’s Race
• How the Governor Candidates Spent Their Money
• Council Candidates Raise Half Million
• What the Campaign Finance Reports Tell Us
• Consider Caldwell ‘Consulted’
• Grassroots Campaigning For The Board of Education

Supreme Folly

We started and ended the week with coverage of Gov. Linda Lingle’s nomination of appeals court Judge Katherine Leonard to become the next chief justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court, Understanding the Katherine Leonard Pick. Reporter-Host Chad Blair pointed out in his third paragraph Monday that the largest hurdle for Leonard “would be a negative rating from the Hawaii State Bar Association.” Boy, was he right. It was all downhill from there for Leonard, as Chad told our readers Friday. Again, all week, you could follow developments on our news service as they happened. But we also went further, by asking the tough questions that were on many minds: What was up with the secrecy of the bar association? How could it be taken seriously if it wouldn’t explain its reasoning? Our Michael Levine explored how it suddenly seemed like it was the bar association that was on trial, Hawaii Bar Association’s Secrecy Under Fire.

The Board of Who?

Quick. Can you name two members of the Hawaii State Board of Education? OK. How about one? What about a candidate for one of the seven seats that will be filled in November? Yet this 13-member body sets education policy for the state that affects 180,000 students and 22,000 teachers and support staff. In other words, they’re the folks responsible for the state’s biggest investment. Yet few of us know who they are.

Our Katherine Poythress has been working hard to change that. And this week she published the results of that effort. You’d think it would be easy to get the backgrounds of the 14 board of education members. After all, they’re public figures. Think again. It took months to gather the information, Who Is the Elected Board of Education?. She also put together mini-profiles and resumes of the 17 candidates this November, Who Are The Board Of Education Candidates?. We know you may not want to read all 17 resumes in one sitting. But one thing that’s different about what we do online is that they’re on our site when you want to look at them. You’ll find a topic page on the board of education and the board of education election that we hope can help guide you to an understanding of an important local body.

The Council on Revenues

When we launched Civil Beat, we talked about the importance of looking at issues through an economic prism. Well, this week Civil Beat contributing writer Nanea Kalani did just that with her article on the Council on Revenues, State Pays a Price for Faulty Economic Forecasts. These seven unelected folks, working without a staff or pay, provide the basis for the budget the governor and Legislature prepares. What Civil Beat found was that the panel is often wrong, and when it’s off, there’s a real price. This article is an example of the kind of original, gutsy reporting you can expect from Civil Beat.

Beatups and Fact Checks

When I talk about picking up the beat at Civil Beat, in part I’m talking about the Fact Check feature I introduced last week. It’s our way of keeping tabs on what politicians are saying. We look into the truth of their claims and let you know the reality. You’ll find a slew of them on the site under our Elections tab. And there’ll be many more to come.

In the end, all this work is about helping you understand local issues. Most of what we do happens online. But we like to get people together with leading thinkers in our community in person, too. And that’s just what we did Thursday evening, when about 60 people showed up for our first forum based on the essays in “The Value of Hawaii,” the new book on the future of the state published by University of Hawaii Press. On Monday, we’ll continue the series, with an essay on the state’s Economy — be forewarned, it’s not a pretty picture — by UH economist Sumner La Croix. I hope you’ll check it out and join the conversation about what we should do to build a brighter future.

For now, it’s time to reflect — and to prepare for this political season to get even busier.