Posted on 06/05/2010 8:32:20 AM PDT by STARWISE
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin and The Honolulu Advertiser have competed to chronicle Hawaii for more than a century.
That rivalry ends Sunday when the Advertiser, Hawaii's largest newspaper, publishes its last edition. It's being bought out and combined with its smaller rival.
More than 400 reporters, pressmen and other workers are losing their jobs.
The 154-year-old Advertiser is the latest casualty of the recession and the upheaval that the Internet has unleashed on the traditional media industry.
The new owner plans to launch the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Monday.
Honolulu now joins Denver and Seattle as cities served by only one daily newspaper and a shrinking pool of professional journalists.
"That rivalry ends Sunday when the Advertiser, Hawaii's largest newspaper, publishes its last edition after being bought out and combined with its smaller rival. More than 400 reporters, pressmen and other workers are losing their jobs."
*snip*
Oahu Publications owner David Black offered to buy the Advertiser from Gannett Co. after determining his company would have to close the Star-Bulletin or purchase the Advertiser to survive. After announcing a deal with Gannett, Black put the Star-Bulletin up for sale to satisfy antitrust laws but never got an acceptable offer.
A decade ago, Black was the one who saved Honolulu from becoming a one-newspaper town by purchasing the Star-Bulletin from Liberty Newspapers LP. Liberty had agreed to accept $26.5 million from Gannett to shut down the Star-Bulletin, but a court ordered the newspaper to be put on the market. Back then, the Star-Bulletin was selling 63,500 papers a day."
___________________________________________
Excerpt:
Desolation Sound doesn't seem like the ideal place to begin rescuing a newspaper. It is a popular cruising spot off the wild western coast of British Columbia that attracts the hardy sailors.
Like David Black, a wealthy Canadian newspaper entrepreneur who last year bought the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, an ailing afternoon daily whose assets consisted of little more than a nameplate and an editorial staff.
In just over three months, he built a brand-new newspaper.
How he pulled it off against steady predictions that it could not be done--and for a few dark nights it looked like it could not--is a tale of newspaper derring-do. For those who lived it, the startup was a grand adventure, maybe even a miracle.
But survival was never assured, and still is not certain.
The story begins in July 2000 as Black sailed his 77-foot ketch, the Esperanza, through Desolation Sound. His cell phone rang. It was Phil Murray, a Santa Fe newspaper broker.
Murray had not been able to find a major American publisher who was interested in buying the 60,000-circulation Star-Bulletin. It would mean getting into a newspaper war against the morning paper owned by Gannett, the largest owner of U.S. newspapers, with a reputation for putting its competitors out of business.
Murray figured that Canadians were more used to operating in competitive markets and might not be scared off by the prospect of duking it out with Gannett.
Black immediately asked: "Is there a commercial printing press on the island?"
There was.
"Is it for sale?" was his second question.
~~Ping!
Needs a “Dinosaur Media DeathWatch” tag.
1. They’re admitting we’re still in a recession?
2. They aren’t dying because of recession. They’re dying because they’re liberal and people aren’t buying their crap.
3. They can’t figure out why because they can’t see (or admit if they do see) their own bias that everyone else can see, they think they’re objective and everyone else clearly sees they aren’t. They are kidding themselves.
4. Print media is archaic. They are the buggy-whi industry and they are refusing to change. Those that are going online have a better chance at figuring out how to be profitable. However if they don’t get their acts together and admit bias or deal with their bias and become more balanced, and leave opinions out of what’s supposed to be news stories, they won’t make it even if they do change.
Sooooooooooooo, what will happen to their archives???
Hawaii is faced with a shrinking pool of professional leftists.
That’s the immediate thought.
shredded
which was more liberal?
Down the memory hole I bet. A “current of warm air”, and problem gone...
Or worse, altered and used as fact.
One down — one to go.
'recycled'...
Yeah ;-)
Maybe people aren’t buying their LIBERAL lies anymore?
Is this a LIBERAL paper?
Don’t fret, maybe Obama will bail them out.
Archives???? We don't need no stinkin' archives!
Maybe they shouldn’t have restricted people from posting Advertiser articles on other websites and blogs?
Many’s the time I found an interseting story on the Advertiser but didn’t excerpt-post it here and other places because of their ‘copyright’ policy. Just waited a few day until it came out in the Bulletin or the Hawaii Reporter and then posted that ... which brought more readers to their competitors webpage.
Stupid is a stupid does.
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