Each day, Monday through Friday, computer users can view an updated starbulletin.com edition. Friday's weekend edition is updated Saturday with late-breaking news and sports results so readers don't have to wait until Monday.
Starting today, there's also a new look and new features as starbulletin.com broadens its reach.
It's not meant to replace the daily newspaper and doesn't have everything the printed paper has, says John M. Flanagan, editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin. There are no advertisements, for example.
"This isn't a commercial venture for the Star-Bulletin," Flanagan said. "It may become one, but right now it's a way to communicate with the readers."
Many big newspapers started their online editions as an advertising vehicle intended to eventually make money. "Starbulletin.com on the other hand was launched as a reader interaction, communication and promotion venture," Flanagan said. "We had a different mission."
That interaction is definitely there, said Flanagan and Blaine Fergerstrom, the paper's Webmaster and creator and operator of the online edition.
Fergerstrom said the site gets about 70,000 "hits" a day, with a hit being registered each time someone looks at the online paper or a part of it.
Dozens of them send e-mail to the paper each day, asking for information, commenting on stories, submitting letters to the editor or just to say they're glad the online edition exists, Flanagan said.
One keen user is Robert Iversen, a fisheries consultant and former Honolulu resident who now lives in Melbourne, Australia. "I bring it down every day. It keeps me in touch with Hawaii," Iversen said. He is one of the many readers who have sent e-mail messages to the Star-Bulletin because of something they've read in the online edition.
Reaction to starbulletin.com started small, Fergerstrom said, with just a few thousand hits. Then it got some special boosts. In October, the Star-Bulletin interviewed Honolulu-born Guy Kawasaki, an Apple Fellow for Apple Computer Inc.
"I e-mailed him, telling him the interview was in the online edition," Fergerstrom recalled. Kawasaki used his e-mail newsletter to alert his 100,000 or so followers. Thousands of them jumped to starbulletin.com to read the story and see a color picture of Kawasaki in Waikiki.
The newspaper saw its daily hits suddenly rise to 40,000, from about 25,000. Michael Jackson's Hawaii concert in early January and a special Star-Bulletin series on same-sex marriage later that month brought more thousands.
"People came to the site and decided they liked what they saw," Fergerstrom said.
Flanagan said a good part of the online edition's success is shown in the two-way communication with local readers and outsiders interested in Hawaii, whether they are former residents, people who have visited the islands, or just people who are attracted by the idea of island life.
Readers find it easy to send letters to the editor. The online letters page has an electronic form that writers can e-mail in.
"The thing about Hawaii is that local news about what's going on here fills an international niche," Flanagan said.
Starbulletin.com hasn't affected circulation of the printed edition, he said. The online edition doesn't include all the national and international news or the entire local report from the newspaper.
"If you live in Hawaii, you need something more than starbulletin.com. . . . You can't take starbulletin.com every place you can take the newspaper and you can't get it all the places you can get the newspaper," Flanagan said.
On the other hand, the versatility of computers gives the online edition things the printed paper doesn't have.
Readers who took part in the Great Aloha Run can download a database list of the thousands of finishers and find where they placed and what their time was.
Special features such as the same-sex series and the newspaper's award-winning "Locked Out" series on access to government information, are kept online and can be accessed any time. Law schools throughout the world found Circuit Judge Kevin Chang's full ruling on same-sex marriages on starbulletin.com, Fergerstrom said.
The business section includes a link to instant stock quotes.
Schedules of major University of Hawaii Rainbows sports events are available for the whole season. Online readers anywhere in the world can even listen to a local Honolulu radio station, KCCN, when it broadcasts UH games.
The Star-Bulletin was by no means the first to put an online edition out on the World Wide Web. Many came later, however, and starbulletin.com has been well received. In an electronic straw poll by the American Journalism Review, starbulletin.com made it into the top 20 among news sites listed as reader favorites, beating out some big names like the Chicago Tribune and the Detroit Free Press.
Star-Bulletin Managing Editor David Shapiro said the most important key to the site's success has been webmaster Fergerstrom, who in December won the Star-Bulletin's annual Kilohana Award for Unsung Hero.
"He designed an attractive, easy-to-use site and puts forth a prodigious effort every day to keep it up-to-date. He's simply the best in Hawaii at what he does," Shapiro said.
Take a look at today's starbulletin.com and you will see some changes, including:
An Aloha Worldwide section that lets Hawaiians and Hawaiians at heart know about Hawaii-related events outside the islands, maybe right where they live. People can list luaus, reunions, concerts and other events outside Hawaii.
3 p.m. daily, Monday-Friday.
- Editorials, letters to the editor (and an instant way to send your own letter to the editor by e-mail)
- Daily closing prices of Hawaii stocks and an instant price lookup for your own favorite shares.
- UH Rainbows sports schedules for 1997.
- All the best special series that have appeared in the Star-Bulletin since March 18, 1996.
- Special packages such as a downloadable database of Great Aloha Run results.
- Back issues since March 18, 1996, startup day for starbulletin.com.
- Much more