ONE of the good things about being a newspaper columnist in Hawaii is that it is impossible to get a big head. Believe me, I try. By any other name,
we’re not as sweetI'll get invited to speak at some hoity-toity gathering and start feeling smug. Then the host introduces me as a writer for the morning paper. The competition. The enemy. The paper whose butt I've been trying to kick for the past 18 years, since I was a police beat reporter. The smugness is wiped away.
The truth is that there has historically been a lot of confusion by the average resident about the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, The Honolulu Advertiser and the Hawaii Newspaper Agency.
Some of it is our fault. We really haven't done enough to explain how and why the newspapers are set up the way they are in Hawaii.
Most people know that newspapers have a Joint Operating Agreement sanctioned by the federal Newspaper Preservation Act that allows two independently owned newspapers to share advertising, production and distribution services. The purpose of the act is to protect failing newspapers across the country, to assure that cities have at least two editorial voices.
But things in Hawaii got complicated. The JOA was intended to protect the morning paper, which was failing at the time. But due to a national shift in newspaper reading habits, afternoon newspapers across the country have begun to fail. Many have closed down. The JOA in Hawaii now helps the Star-Bulletin stay in the game.
To further complicate things for Hawaii residents, Gannett Co., which owned the Star-Bulletin for years, sold us and bought the Advertiser; Gannett also owns the Hawaii Newspaper Agency; and both papers are located in the same building. And to muddy the fine print a little more, a number of reporters and editors have worked for both papers at various times.
So I guess I shouldn't get upset when someone says I work for the opposition. But it does irk me. Despite what certain ex-mayors say on their radio shows, competition is fierce between writers, editors and columnists for the two papers.
I've always thought we needed to do more to delineate and promote the Star-Bulletin's identity. We are finally doing it.
In the next few weeks you are going to see and hear more about the Star-Bulletin. We will be running newspaper, radio and television ads that stress "We Make Waves."
This is overdue in my book. Because the Star-Bulletin has made a lot of waves in this community since becoming independent of Gannett. We were the first paper to use computer graphics, full color and dynamic layouts to compete in the television age. Despite attempts by other media to minimize our impact, we were the first paper to run the ground-breaking "Broken Trust" report. The waves of that continuing coverage are rocking Bishop Estate's boat something fierce. Our series on government secrecy won a national journalism award. And, come to think about it, Honolulu Lite has won a few, too.
I'm not saying there's no room for improvement. But the fact is, the Star-Bulletin is a distinct paper with it's own voice and attitude.
As the world's only "investigative humorist," I have pushed column-writing to the edge of the envelope. Now, with the "We Make Waves" effort, I will push Honolulu Lite even further, seek out strange new controversies, boldly go where no columnist has gone before. Waves? When I show up to give a speech, by God, there better be lifeguards in the audience. And I'm going to need a bigger hat.
