GEORGE CHAPLIN / RETIRED
HONOLULU ADVERTISER EDITOR

Newsman
took up local causes

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By Mary Adamski
madamski@starbulletin.com

When George Chaplin was brought to town in 1958 as editor of the Honolulu Advertiser, he had already established his interest in the community. Former Advertiser Publisher Thurston Twigg-Smith said both Honolulu dailies tried to lure Chaplin because of his editorials supporting Hawaii statehood in New Jersey, California and Louisiana newspapers.

STAR-BULLETIN / 1978 George Chaplin was the only local newsman elected president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Thanks to a World War II assignment to establish the Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes in Honolulu, Chaplin "knew what a vibrant society there was here," said Twigg-Smith.

During his 28 years as editor in chief, Chaplin took an active role in Hawaii affairs, joining numerous organizations, committees and boards. He led a fund-raising effort to create the Arizona Memorial and was appointed chairman of the East-West Center board of governors and a member of the 1980s Governor's Committee on the Year 2000.

Chaplin retired in 1986 after a journalism career of more than 50 years. He died yesterday in Arlington, Va., at the age of 88. He and his wife, Esta, had returned to their native South Carolina, and after her death two years ago, he lived with his son, Stephen, in McLean, Va.

"He changed the character of the Advertiser more than any other editor," said Twigg-Smith.

"He got into the community in real depth. It made a huge difference in the paper, which had been sort of aloof and out of touch with the ethnic groups in the community."

Chaplin is credited with playing a key role in turning the morning newspaper from the brink of failure. The paper was failing financially when, in 1962, the Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin entered into a joint operating agreement, maintaining independent news departments, which continued through ownership changes until they separated in 2001.

Chaplin was the only local journalist to be elected president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which "shows how highly regarded he was in his profession," said former Advertiser Editor Gerald Keir.

"He was a sort of a journalistic godfather to so many people, including me, and changed our careers. He had high standards. Inaccuracy drove him crazy. I remember during a bad stretch of errors, he put up a sign in the newsroom: 'Get it first, but first get it right.'"

Chaplin had been a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 1940-41. "He felt it was most useful of any single year in his life," said son Stephen. And that bore fruit in creation of the East-West Center Jefferson Fellowships for American and Asian Pacific journalists.

"He was a great believer in competition and the importance of two or more newspapers in a city," said Stephen Chaplin, retired from the U.S. Foreign Service. "He thought it benefited the community and ... benefited the leading paper because it pushed them to try to do better.

"He had a great intellectual curiosity in history, medicine, culture, a thirst that manifested itself through travel," said his son. "He went some places because they were important to the U.S. He was in the first group of American editors to go to China. The other reason was to see how other countries handled tourism."

The Chaplins endowed a scholarship at Temple Emanu-El in Nuuanu.

Chaplin was born in Columbia, S.C., and graduated from Clemson College. He worked on newspapers in Greenville, S.C.; Camden, N.J.; San Diego; and New Orleans.

He is also survived by daughter Jerri Chaplin, of Charleston, S.C.; sister Kay Greene, of New Orleans; and four grandchildren.

Services and burial will be in Charleston. The family suggests that memorial contributions may be made to Temple Emanu-El, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., or to a favorite charity.