By Anne Harpham

A reader sent an e-mail objecting to a quote in a story last Sunday on a shooting in Kapahulu. The quote: "I looked in the parking lot and saw this local man talking with this, I think, he was a haole guy with a yellow T-shirt on."

The reader noted that he supports the First Amendment and believes newspapers have a right to print what they feel is appropriate. But he took exception to the use of "haole guy," saying it was a racial epithet. The reader's thoughtful comments raise two issues. When are racial descriptions appropriate in a story and which terms are considered derogatory?

Our policy on the use of racial terms requires that they be clearly relevant to a story. In a crime story, racial descriptions are relevant if they are part of a detailed and precise police description of a suspect. Would we say a suspect is Caucasian or Filipino or African American? Yes, if it was part of a description detailed enough to include other characteristics, including height, build, hair and identifying marks, such as tattoos. The race of the victim usually would not be relevant, unless authorities believed, for example, that an attack was motivated by race.

There were two terms used in the quote cited by the reader that we would generally not use in a description in a crime story: local and haole. Both words can carry positive, negative or neutral connotations, depending on the context in which they are used. But the major reason we would not use them is neither is a precise racial description.

Is "haole" derogatory? Thoughtful people could debate that question for hours. There are some racial terms that all except the most bigoted can agree are epithets. Is haole one of those? I don't think so.

I'm haole. I was born and raised in Hawai'i and the word does not bother me unless it is clearly used to degrade someone. Others don't agree. But haole is a word that is used commonly, is accepted by most and generally describes Caucasians. We do use the term in the paper, not often, but usually in a context that describes a unique Hawai'i group.

In the context of the Sunday story, the witness' quote provided a description of what happened during the shooting. I don't know if the witness used either local and haole as derogatory terms, but in the context of the story they didn't sound that way to me. Would we have used them outside of the quote? No —neither was necessary to the story.

Should we have avoided this particular quote? Some editors probably would have. Good reporters know when to move a story forward by using the subject's own words and when to paraphrase. It certainly was better storytelling to use the quote; it put the reader at the scene. Did we violate our own rules by using the quote? It's more gray than black and white. The writer used the quote to convey the mood, chronology and facts of the story. Was it wrong to include haole and local? I don't think so. But I also hope that both writers and editors think carefully about racial terms whenever they are used in a story and make a conscious decision that they are necessary to the story.

• Tuesday morning, some readers were surprised to see a blank A5 page. Those readers got what we call spoils — papers that have a problem — bad color, bad inking, folds and creases, bad cuts. They aren't supposed to get out of the building, but sometimes they do.

There are always spoils at the beginning of a press run as color is adjusted and other problems are corrected. One of the problems early Tuesday was an ink problem at the A5 position on the press. There was a pinch in the hose supplying ink to that press position, so the page was blank.

It wasn't caught until 5,000 papers had run. Pressmen thought they caught all the spoils and pulled them out of the bundles meant for distribution, but some slipped through. The spoils are sent out for recycling.

The goal, of course, is to catch all the spoils, not just a majority. If you do get a spoiled paper, please call the circulation department at 538-6397 to have a replacement paper delivered.

Senior editor Anne Harpham is the reader representative. Reach her at aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8033.