Need a Valentine's Day gift for the political junkie you love, but you gave almost all your cash to your favorite presidential candidate?

Take heart: The Borders store at the Ward Centre is selling Rudy Giuliani Countdown to Victory 2008 calendars for just a buck. Imagine, $1 buys 11 months in which you and your lover can be reminded of what could have been.

I also saw on sale John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton Countdown to Victory calendars.

When I spoke to UH students last week, one of the warnings I gave them was: When you read, watch or listen to news, know your gatekeepers.

The Honolulu Advertiser is a news gatekeeper, the New York Times is a gatekeeper, so are Rush Limbaugh and National Public Radio, CNN and Fox News, the Vanity Fair and Matt Drudge.

A gatekeeper is a person or organization that chooses what news you will read and what you will not. That’s not necessarily censorship, that’s just reality. There is no way any news organization can run all the news. It wouldn’t fit.

And no one has the resources to cover every story they consider worthwhile, including big organizations such as The Associated Press and The New York Times. So we all pick and choose, looking for worthwhile stories and stories than can be done effectively and efficiently, and affect a substantial number of people. Not every story can be an earth-shattering investigative piece that takes months to report and assemble, so we pick those investigative reports carefully and look for subjects that could have high impact.

How do you pick a gatekeeper that is worth of your time and attention? Here are some criteria:

Does your gatekeeper have a code of ethics? (And does it follow that code?)

Does your gatekeeper run corrections? (Every news organization is made up of people, ipso facto there will be mistakes.)

Does your gatekeeper run critical letters and e-mails from its readers or viewers? (Letters expressing an opinion about someone other than the gatekeeper have their place, but the real test is will your gatekeeper run a letter saying it screwed up.)

Does your gatekeeper often take you out of your comfort zone? (Why bother with a gatekeeper that tells you what you already know or simply reinforces your opinions?)

The Advertiser, and most daily newspapers in the country, can answer yes to all of those questions. The Advertiser is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. and follows Gannett’s code of ethics. Every year or two, each employee in the newsroom is required to reread that code; all the company’s managers are also required read and take a quiz on Gannett's corporate ethics, which cover far more territory than just the news.

Here is the first section of our newsroom code:

Seeking and reporting the truth in a truthful way

* We will dedicate ourselves to reporting the news accurately, thoroughly and in context.
* We will be honest in the way we gather, report and present news.
* We will be persistent in the pursuit of the whole story.
* We will keep our word.
* We will hold factual information in opinion columns and editorials to the same standards of accuracy as news stories.
* We will seek to gain sufficient understanding of the communities, individuals and stories we cover to provide an informed account of activities.

You can read the full code of ethics at the Gannett Newspaper Division’s Web site and click on the link that says Principles of Ethical Conduct.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors maintains a Web page with links to the ethics codes of many news organizations, including Gannett. Check out some of the codes listed under news organizations, including ASNE itself and the Society of Professional Journalists. Does your gatekeeper try to follow these principles?

We run our corrections on A4. It can be embarrassing at times, but "the straights" as we call them are a necessary part of maintaining our credibility. With the corrections runs this note about contacting one of our two managing editors: If you have a question or concern about the accuracy, fairness or thoroughness of an item in The Honolulu Advertiser, please call Marsha McFadden at 535-2426.

The Advertiser’s letters to the editor run daily in the paper and on the Web site. One thing we require is that letter writers identify themselves and provide information that allows us to confirm their identity. On the Web, we provide a forum for feedback to some stories. We plan in the future to allow our readers to add their comments to any story on the Web site.

Finally, I think it is important that a gatekeeper challenges your beliefs. Look for gatekeepers that quote a variety of sources in their news stories and that reflect a range of opinions in their commentaries. One of the most disturbing reports I have ever read was one that found that the more educated people were, the more likely they were to hold rigid political beliefs. Furthermore, those rigid beliefs were likely set in stone before college graduation. That’s scary.

How can you claim to be an independent news organization when you depend on advertisers for revenue?

That was one of the questions I was asked Wednesday when I spoke to University of Hawai’i-Manoa Communications students. I enjoy speaking to students because I can talk about the news business, which I think is both an exciting career and a valuable public service. And I always feel challenged by the students, by their idealism, their youthful perspective and their questions. I promised to write in today's blog entry about the warnings I gave them, but I’ll save that for another day.

Instead I want to address that question of independence. I acknowledged to those students that it can be uncomfortable when you are dependent on advertisers that might also be potential news subjects. But this newsroom operates independently of The Honolulu Advertiser’s advertising and business departments. So if a major advertiser becomes a news story, we cover them without fear or favor. Some of the major advertisers that have come in for unbiased (and unflattering) coverage in recent months have included the Superferry, Hawaiian Telcom and others. And yes, there have been times when companies have cancelled ads because they didn’t like the news coverage. No one is happy about that but we accept it as part of the cost of being in the news business.

Is this a perfect situation? Not really, but in an imperfect world, this system of news organizations dependent on advertising has functioned reasonably well. Hawai’i is served by two newspapers, four TV newsrooms and several radio newsrooms. The diversity of choices and the competition serves Hawai’i well. Not perfectly, but well.

America is similarly well served by news organizations dependent on advertising. Could the national news media do a better job? Absolutely, we fall short of the best we can do every day of the week. We are often slow, but we usually catch up and end up where we should be. Competition forces us to keep improving. In an imperfect world, we usually we do a pretty good job. Hardly the stuff to inspire idealistic young students, but that’s the reality.

National Public Radio and PBS are interesting alternatives because they depend mostly on listener donations. But they also depend on corporate sponsors, which may pull their sponsorship if they are unhappy with coverage. And, of course, NPR and PBS must continue to satisfy their listeners and viewers. That’s why they are more arts and entertainment media than news media.

Government sponsored and controlled media have had some success — the CBC in Canada and the BBC in Britain are good, though imperfect, examples. The government usually operates those organizations at arm’s length from policymakers, but not always. And the failures of government-supported media are far more numerous than the successes. Just look at any authoritarian society where the media is an arm of oppression.

So, I told the students that advertiser-supported newsrooms are less than perfect, but that they have served America well for many generations. That’s something I can live with.

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I spent a long time answering questions from the UH students, so I missed the 3 p.m. meeting. That means my score was 0%.

My wife, who is a journalism professor, and I will be speaking to University of Hawai'i Communications students on Wednesday about careers in journalism and about news.

As a newsman, one of my jobs is to warn people — about storms, new laws, road construction and other things they may not expect. So I feel it is my duty to issue a few warnings to these young people.

First warning: If you are interested in a safe, predictable lifetime career, stay out of the news business.

No one knows what the news business will look like in 10 or 20 years. Technology and changing consumer habits are transforming news organizations and who knows which organizations will survive, and what types of jobs will be needed most in the future. One thing is a good bet: the more skills you have — such as the ability to report and write a story, shoot and edit video, build a Web page — the more likely you will have a job in the evolving news business.

Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation read news on newsprint, so newspapers will remain viable and profitable for a while. But few people under 40 read a newspaper. To reach people of all ages, newspapers have to be online. The problem is online advertising doesn’t yet cover the cost of covering the news. The uncertainty of not knowing where your paycheck will be coming from in the future can be unnerving.

TV news has been forced to change, too. The old model is you watched the news at 6 and 10; you saw the items the TV station picked and you watched in the order that they selected. But today, young people want to watch what they want, when they want. YouTube is the new model.

That’s why the Honolulu Advertiser, a newspaper, is posting video on its Web site, and lets people watch just the items they want, when they want.

More changes are ahead for the news business, so if you want a safe, predictable career, stay out of journalism. But if you are flexible, can tell the news in different ways using varied technologies, and want to be part of a revolution in the news business, then this will be a great career. And you will play the key role that newspapers have always played in America, providing information to citizens and supporting a dialogue that society needs to flourish.

(Of course, technology and changing consumer preferences are transforming many businesses, so there may be no safe, predictable, lifetime careers for these people.)

Coming next: My other warnings to young people.

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An easy 100% score for Wednesday morning's front page.

When we look at a national story, we consider whether the story has major impact on Hawai’i. If the local impact is substantial that story is a candidate for Page One. If the local impact is small or nonexistent, the story will likely end up inside the paper or will not run.

A national story that ended up on a lot of newspapers’ front pages on Saturday morning was the huge national job losses that were reported Friday. At this writing, editors were planning to put it on the front page of the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and many other papers.

We did not run the story on Page One. There were too many strong local stories this evening and we feel, in general, that economic stories are best given a local focus. That’s why we have produced major stories on the slight downturn in tourism during 2007 and on projections for the coming year. Stories and statistics about local unemployment, local housing prices and other local economic issues are more relevant than national stories. We won’t ignore the national stories — any national or global recession will have a huge impact here — but our strongest emphasis is on the local dimensions of any economic slowdown (or upturn).

We joined many other papers in the putting on Page One the Microsoft bid to take over Yahoo. The story had been reported widely for most of Friday, so I looked for a version with a forward-looking focus. I picked a version from the San Jose Mercury News that I liked because it focused on the difficulties that Microsoft faces in merging with Yahoo and then taking on Google. I then merged it with the Washington Post’s story, which was clear and comprehensive, contained the necessary background to make the story whole.

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Thursday’s score for Friday’s paper: 80%