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It’s always good to stop and take a breath.

I often do it when I run around Ala Moana Park. I like to stand at the tip of Magic Island and watch the waves roll in and look at the city in the morning light, before picking up my slow pace and starting to run again.

Well, this week we did something similar at Civil Beat.

It was March 29 when journalists joined me and the rest of the Civil Beat team here in Kaimuki. (Pierre Omidyar, Randy Ching and software developers Ryan Kanno and Mark Quezada were already working on the project when I joined them in January.) We didn’t make a big deal out of it on Sept. 29, but the date did give us cause for reflection.

A few thoughts:

• Thank you to those of you who’ve joined us on this journey. Your support and feedback have helped us immeasurably.
• We’ve come a long way. But there’s so much more to do as we try to refine how to serve you better and get more people experiencing the Civil Beat way of journalism.
• Civil Beat is on the map, less than five months after its formal launch. One good indication: Our reporter-hosts don’t seem to have to explain what Civil Beat is anymore when they make a call to someone for an article.

Today, we have a total of 14 people publishing what we still sometimes call a “newspaper.” Eight work on the editorial side, six on the business and technical side.

To see how different what we’re doing is from when we started, take a look at the picture I’m running with this article. It shows our website on the first day.

You can see how much the site itself has changed. But a glance at what appeared on the site this week gives an indication of how much our journalism has evolved.

• The highlight of the week, from my perspective, has been Michael Levine’s diary of trying to eat all 100 percent local, From Ground to Grindz: Trying to Eat Local. The series is personal, but about a larger policy issue. It’s episodic, constantly updated. But you can access it whenever you feel like it. If you haven’t checked it out, I hope you will.
• We promised from the start that we would be going beyond press releases to tell you what government is really doing. That means using public records. In Civil Beat Shares Hawaii Health Systems Corp. Salaries, Nanea Kalani provides the latest installment in our series on public employee salaries. How money is being spent and who’s getting paid how much and what for are all important aspects of basic transparency.
• We also promised to share differing views from our own. We did just that this week in an article about how the Hawaii Government Employees Association has responded to our publishing government records that are required by law to be public, Public Union to Seek Changes to Open Records Law.
• There are many in the community with so much to offer. At Civil Beat, we try to turn to experts to help provide understanding, a core part of our mission. This week UH law professor Jon Van Dyke, in his essay, Why the Akaka Bill Should be Enacted, provided perspective that could only come from someone with is years of experience.
• Civil debate and discussion has been a core part of our mission from the start. We see it every day in our discussions. But we’re also seeing it in the articles people are submitting on their own to the site, and in the responses government makes to them. A good example this week was John Brizdle’s Opinion: Honolulu Should Not Start Rail Construction Until Engineering is Complete and Final Cost is Known and the response from the city of Honolulu, Opinion: Honolulu Responds to Brizdle on Rail Construction.
• We promised not just to report what leaders say, but to look into the accuracy of their statements. Our Fact Checks are a regular example of that. But it’s also how we approach our regular reporting. Take, for example, Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona‘s suggestion that Hawaii follow Utah and implement a four-day week for public employees. Well, our Chad Blair looked into what actually happened in Utah, Utah and Four-Day Workweeks, and the idea might sound good in a speech but an auditor there found savings attributed to the program were overstated.

As we move forward, some of the things we’ve been doing will be replaced by new ideas. I hope you’ll share what else you’re looking for from Civil Beat. As I wrote on Day 1, “We start this news service with the belief that we’re here to serve you.”