You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
The couple from Dallas looked enviably at Honolulu's two newspapers on display at the Longs Drug counter, asking the woman ahead of them in line which was better. I immediately interjected my opinion. The husband asked the basis of my partiality, and my answer -- that I work at the Star-Bulletin -- prompted his laughing response: "Full disclosure!"
He went on to say that Dallas once had such newspaper competition until the afternoon Times-Herald folded in 1991, victim partly to the recession of the late 1980s. Since then, he said, the surviving Dallas Morning News has plummeted in quality. Lack of competition does that, he said. The reverse is also true.
Today marks the first of what we expect to be many anniversaries of the new Star-Bulletin, completing a year of newspaper warfare that has brought greater quality and lower advertising prices to Honolulu. Having struggled through the past six months of a terror-stricken economy, we celebrate not only our survival but our confidence of good things to come.
--Lee Catterall