I MAOPOPO IĀ 'OE MANA'O

Aloha! Welcome to the first
web-only Ka Wai Ola…Loa

By Blaine Fergerstrom / Ka Wai Ola Loa

If you are reading this, you should count yourself among the most privileged of Ka Wai Ola readers. Not everyone has been invited to see this.

In October, OHA Administrator Clyde Nāmu'o announced that beginning in January 2009, Ka Wai Ola would begin publishing a mid-month, web-only edition. Surprise! You're looking at it!

Very quickly, I am sure you realize, it is not January 2009, yet.

We here at Ka Wai Ola decided to test the waters early with a mid-December soft launch of the new Ka Wai Ola Loa…loa, as in an "extra," "additional" Ka Wai Ola, every month.

At Ka Wai Ola, we cover a vast range of stories and topics, we think, of great interest to the Hawaiian community. You might imagine that, coming out once a month, we receive far more information and there are many more stories than we could possibly cover in just one issue. The printed Ka Wai Ola is generally limited to 32 or 36 pages and we must give up some of those pages for our advertisers. In the end, we have many fewer column inches to devote to the stories we love than we would like.

The Internet and the Worldwide Web provide the perfect solution to our dilemma. On the web, there are no limits to column-inches!

We decided to take our extra material from Ka Wai Ola, combine it with other material that missed Ka Wai Ola deadlines, and publish it in a mid-month, second edition of our paper, to be published only on the web.

You are among our very first readers. We welcome you, and thank you for stopping by. Please take a moment to let us know what you think. Send email to webmaster@oha.org with your comments and suggestions on this and future editions of Ka Wai Ola Loa.

We are planning a column in future issues to answer beneficiary questions and concerns. If you have a question or problem for us to tackle, write to webmaster@oha.org and we'll consider your question for publication in a future edition of Ka Wai Ola Loa.

We hope you find in Ka Wai Ola Loa all you have come to enjoy in Ka Wai Ola, and a little bit more!

Mahalo a nui loa.