Hawaii’s World
Thrice in my 55 years with the Star-Bulletin, it has been put on the auction block. Twice the buyers broke the mold and brought something fresh to journalism in Hawaii. Black adds name to
list of bold ownersThe remarkable thing about the 1961 sale to a hui, or group, of buyers in Hawaii was that they were led by the late Chinn Ho. He became the first non-Caucasian owner of a major daily in Hawaii.
The remarkable thing about today's turnover to David Black's newspaper group is that he is the first Canadian on the scene. He comes with experience that convinces him afternoon newspapers still have their place in the scheme of things. He may see Hawaii as more a part of the world than of the United States and thus not captive to the U.S. trend against afternoon dailies.
His initial press run of 100,000 for a paper that has averaged about 60,000 sales a day shows a brave intent to make major inroads into the dominant Honolulu Advertiser's morning street sales and into its neighbor island circulation. Eventually, neighbor island home deliveries for this newspaper may be restored after a long hiatus. When they were phased out, the energy crisis of the 1970s was given as the reason.
Another unspoken reason was the Hawaii Newspaper Agency's contract calling for it to equalize circulation between the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin. This paper then was out front and resistant to inroads.The Star-Bulletin is the oldest daily newspaper in continuous circulation in Hawaii. We date back to J. W. Robertson & Co.'s Daily Bulletin, first published Feb. 1, 1882, and soon renamed The Evening Bulletin. The Honolulu Advertiser's claim to being older is based on a predecessor published weekly.
On July 1, 1912, the paper I know and love, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, was created by a merger of the Evening Bulletin and the Hawaiian Star. It had two leading families as owners. President Frank C. Atherton, who came from the Star, was the grandson of missionaries who had arrived in Hawaii in 1820. General Manager Wallace R. Farrington, who had edited the Evening Bulletin, had come to Hawaii in 1894 as a journalist from New England.
They chose Riley H. Allen, city editor of the Evening Bulletin as their editor. He had come here in 1910 from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Farrington was later appointed by Presidents Harding and Coolidge as governor of Hawaii from 1921 to 1929. He then returned to the paper as president and publisher.
Meantime, his son, Joseph, had become managing editor under Allen. They were a strong pair in pushing for equal rights and statehood. Joseph was elected Hawaii's delegate to Congress in 1942.
Allen was still around to hire me, a Pennsylvanian, in 1946 when I was fresh out of the Navy. He stayed as editor and a major combatant in the fight for statehood for Hawaii until 1960, the year after statehood was achieved. He then was required by a court order to resign to serve as a trustee of the Farrington Estate. It dismayed him that the best course to assure income to the Farrington heirs was to sell the paper. This led to the purchase in 1961 by the Chinn Ho group, and, a year later, the formation of the joint operating agreement between the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser, which was cash-strapped and near failure. In turn, the Ho group, with an Atherton heir, Alexander, as a member, sold the paper to Gannett Co. in 1972.
The third auction of the Star-Bulletin came in 1993 after Gannett bought the Advertiser for $250 million because it saw greater opportunity in the morning field. It satisfied antitrust requirements by putting the Star-Bulletin up for auction and finally selling for $15 million to Rupert Phillips' Liberty Newspapers Limited Partnership, with which it had had previous deals on the mainland.
This continued until Gannett in 1999 offered to buy out the Liberty interest and shut down the Star-Bulletin. Public protest led to a Save-Our-Star-Bulletin (SOS) group and the state government suing Gannett and Liberty for antitrust violations. In an unprecedented move, the federal court issued a preliminary injunction keeping the Star-Bulletin open and in a settlement agreement the paper was put up for sale again. The result of that action is today's March 15, 2001, first edition as a part of the Black Press of Victoria, British Columbia.
A.A. Smyser is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.