I was prowling through some old computer files in search of a particular photo and ran across these two short videos of photos taken during the struggle a decade ago to rescue the Honolulu Star-Bulletin from closure.
Those involved with recognize friends and colleagues, some who have died in the intervening years, many others no longer in the business of news.
This first video includes some of the major events following the September 1999 announcement that the Star-Bulletin would be closed.
Then there was November 9, 2000. The day David Black announced that his deal to buy the Star-Bulletin and keep publishng had finally been completed. There was a press conference outside the federal courthouse, champagne in the newsroom, and a celebration at Murphy’s.
No audio accompanies this second set of photos.
How things have changed in the decade since these events unfolded!
Love that Frank deLima song!
The joke’s on us … got so wrapped up in rooting for the underdog, that a blind eye got turned when the same company did the ultimate injustice to the local news industry.
In the end here we are, just one paper, but is it really better to have that one paper be the less resourced, less successful one?
What happened in the interim was that the economic model of a second paper in American cities went bust. The Star-Bulletin was still profitable in 1999.
Sobering. Reflective. Emotional. It was a good fight against a newspaper chain that was in the terrible business of killing newspapers, and the basic bad ethics of Gannett’s actions provided the spark that fired people up.
The Star-Bulletin’s survival was a lone bright spot in the shuttering of newspapers across the nation. But we’re in hard times now, not just economically but in the arena of social discourse.
I’ve provided a link to the top video over at HA, plus a short comment Thanks Ian.
I don’t think I’m the only person who is growing a little tired of these “emotional, sobering” remembrances. In case you missed it, all the stuff that DIDN’T happen to the Bulletin in 2000 actually happened to the Advertiser and hundreds of its employees in 2010. And the way it went down made even less sense and even more people got hurt.
It’s starting to ring a little hollow, and you gotta ask yourself. What’s there to be emotional about at this point?
Perspective: You and others don’t seem to understand. The Advertiser, for all practical purposes, won. The Star-Bulletin recently shut down, the new paper is “the Advertiser” and the new TV ads feature Tizer employees almost exclusively. And they’re getting more bylines (that’s a “seem to”: I haven’t actually counted bylines).
Disclosure: As one of the many Star-Bulletin employees who lost their jobs when David Black’s new Tizer took over the SB, sure, I’m biased.
That bias to the point of claiming the Advertiser somehow got the better end of this is, frankly, ridiculous. There a several hundred more Advertiser staffers on the streets that would beg to differ. What the paper is called and who was in the TV ads never mattered a shred to the employees of the respective companies.
But that Bulletin people lost jobs too is part of the point here, and let’s not forget the scorched-earth destruction of the Sun press facility so as to make it virtually impossible for a competitor to ever rise. Again the question is, why the big to-do over what didn’t happen in 2000, and the short shrift paid to what did happen just a few months ago? The tragedy of 2010 so far outweighs the non-tragedy of 2000 that is pretty well distasteful today to mention it.
You are a part of the 2010 tragedy, do you not find it the least bit irksome that some ignore it to get melodramatic about 2000?
sadly, some SBers are actually whining that the Tiser people are getting all the good bylines. this is a junk argument. yes, the better reporters took over important reporting beats from other reporters who weren’t as good. the reporters who took over the beats are capable of producing solid stories, as opposed to a bunch of weak PR features.
some SB people are being total babies and are lucky they still have jobs – the weak journalists should have been let go in the merger, but they weren’t. instead, seniority rules.
someday this will change. too bad.
Burl, guess you haven’t noticed but Black Press has joined the trend in buying out and then killing papers too.
Excuse me. How could the Advertiser win when among other things: the name has changed, all the top managers are from the Bulletin, all the tiser staff carried over have no seniority and are on 4 month probation , the paper looks more like the Bulletin than the Advertiser, most of the stories suck, most of the photos suck, etc etc. It’s like the Bulletin has won and now they don’t care about the product they are pitting out.
No, not “all the top managers” are from the Star-Bulletin. At least half of the newsroom department heads were replaced with Tizer folks. City editor, Features editor, Online director … all from the Tizer.
I’m not complaining about that, just pointing it out. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I have a lot of friends from both papers (I started at the Advertiser in 1997 before moving to the SB) and I wish them all well. Well, almost all of them.
But the fact is, the Star-Bulletin did shut down when Black bought the Advertiser. So did the Advertiser. What’s left is a new product and a bunch of unemployed journalists. And while I disagree with *some* upper-management decisions (like getting rid of me, har har!), most of the rank-and-file workers are good, decent, conscientious journalists who will keep doing the best they can, in spite of being thwarted by a couple of managers who play favorites, promote and hire their buddies and lack a certain amount of editorial courage.
But these are typical complaints for any workplace, so there ya go.
Black is a businessman and Black Press is a business. Duh. No one ever claimed any different. There is a fundamental difference between Black and Gannett, however. Black shuts down failing papers or combines them with others in order to ensure the survival of his product. Gannett kills papers to wipe out competition, or they scuttle their own product for immediate cash flow.
Gimme a break, this victim mentality with regard to Gannett is old news. The industry has crumbled and Gannett has essentially collapsed under its own weight. You keep on beating the drum but the war is over. Everyone is in survival mode.
But you continue to conveniently ignore what is happening in front of your own face, what you are in fact a contributing part of both through employment and cheerleading.
“Ensuring the survival of his product” means killing the competition, in Honolulu. His own words reflect the fact that reducing competition was the primary goal. The Advertiser was not the failing paper yet it was the one killed. Face up to it, Black did the same thing, and he also took the opportunity to extract a pound of flesh from his own operation.
In 2000, the Bulletin closing would have meant a single remaining paper that was larger than either of the two previously. Today, the Advertiser closing resulted in a single paper smaller than the Advertiser.
Just curious — how many people out there in Honolulu who are complaining about the loss of a two-newspaper town ever stepped up and bought ads in both newspapers? Or paid full subscription rates? A newspaper is not a right, it is a commodity.
wow, so people should stop complaining about the loss of solid journalism … because of capitalism???? ingenious – NOT. we’re gonna keep complaining whether you like it or not.
Hi, again, Perspective. I was at the SB during the whole shutdown drama. Those were heady times.
But yes, I do see your point. I’m not trying to argue about that, just pointing out that the Star-Bulletin did, in fact, shut down in 2010. At the decision of owner David Black, no less.
I disagree with your comment about the TV ads, though. Longtime Star-Bulletin employees have been treated like second-class citizens in favor of the sparkly new Advertiser employees. Why not show off these respected SB journalists? Why is the SA so disrespectful to the employees who gave so much (money, time, effort) to keep the paper alive for the past decade?
It doesn’t get much more disrespectful than being kicked to the curb. The Advertiser staff suffered that ultimate disrespect in the greatest numbers and complaining now about the treatment of those who received deference in staffing decisions (who maintained their seniority, pay and lives) is woefully lacking in Perspective.
There’s quite a few unemployed journalists out there who would love to be anonymously employed right about now.
I don’t know what you mean about second-class citizenship. Truly, I don’t. Whatever stories the new additions have produced were their own initiative. Nothing got handed to them. If you think there were some better stories by the veteran SB-ers that got buried, you could be right but you haven’t (yet) cited any examples. And as for beat reassignments, well, that happened at the Tiser, too. All. The. Time.
As for the ads: It’s merely a marketing gimmick targeting longtime Tiser subscribers. The aim is to convince them that some reporters who were well-known to THEM are still in the merged product. That’s the purpose of the ad, at this stage.
Nahoaloha, your point about the ads is well taken. I’d just like to see more inclusion … more of that “aloha” that marketing people love to yap about.
Just my personal feeling about it, FWIW.
As one of those anonymous employees still helping put out the product, I’m glad to still have a hand in. The Advertiser folks who were let go are understandably bitter. I don’t blame them. But claiming they suffered the “Ultimate Disrespect,” more than any other employee at any other shuttered business is a bit over the top.
We’re trying to put out the best newspaper we can under the circumstances. To claim we’re attacking fired Advertiser employees by consenting to remain employed and productive is just bizarre.
I’m out of this. Your arguments aren’t with me.
The Advertiser was massively overstaffed. Half of them would have fired the day after the Advertiser might have put the Star-Bulletin out of business. And everyone in charge at the new newspaper, from the publisher on down, is either ex-Gannett or ex-Advertiser or both. You expected the A-team? [slightly edited]
Although there’s a heavy presence of ex-Gannett/Advertiser folks in key positions, “everyone in charge” does not share that background, from a quick look down the staff list.
Which explains why they were interviewing people to add to the staff?
To clarify my earlier comment, I don’t consider section editors as top level managers-they are mid level and are not key decision makers. I was talking about the editor and publisher-the real powers in a newsroom.
Publisher Dennis Francis–yes, from Gannett.
Editor Frank Bridgewater–not so much. No Gannett background, as far as I know. [correction: Until he was hired at the Star-Bulletin, which at the time was owned by Gannett.]
“In 2000, the Bulletin closing would have meant a single remaining paper that was larger than either of the two previously.”
ROFL!!!!!!!
My understanding, and it might be faulty, is that Frank Bridgewater worked for Gannett in the early 1980s, as a business writer and then biz editor. This was when Gannett owned the Star-Bulletin.
If I’m wrong, perhaps somebody can correct me. I’ve been Googling to try to confirm, but I don’t have all damn night, and putting “Frank Bridgewater” and “Gannett” in the search box brings up about a zillion hits.
Can’t we all just get along? Why so much hatred/bitterness/whatevers? Two newspapers in this town could not have lasted. It was a miracle it lasted as long as it did. Think about it…all of the arguments being made for one side or the other would be reversed if the SB just succumbed as it was expected to There’s NO question Gannett tried its best to run them out of Dodge. That has been well documented. If anyone thinks that the one newspaper town under Gannett would be pleasant you are sadly mistaken. Gannett took it on the chin for 10 years, they would have been eager to recover the lost profits as quickly as they could have. No question. Black lost a lot of money during that time frame as well. So that same eagerness exists for them as well. Get used to it. In the end, all of this nonsense about who had the better reporter staff and who REALLY won is irrelevant. The real winner is yet to be determined……and so it goes.Too bad we can’t just all move on and hope for the best for all concerned. It’s almost like we are cheering for the 4 or 5 hundred staff that are left for them to lose their jobs too so EVERYONE can be miserable.
There’s a pic of a button that says “SOS. No Monopoly”.
How ironic.
The years prior to the Black purchase were probably among the best for some of us. It was the time when the Bulletin swept the Pa’i awards and could determine it’s own path.
After Black bought the paper, consultants ruled the world, and much of the individual inventiveness that drove the paper toward new media was killed off.
Was fun while it lasted.
I think you put your finger on it.
“Was fun while it lasted.”
spot on, Dean, spot on. at last, some useful perspective!
Thanks for sharing the pics, Ian. Brought back some nice memories.
Rodney King-a lot of us former staffers on both sides understand business is business. But if Gannett and Black/OPI would just follow the rules, such as paying us our severance pay right away as is normally done, and treating Everyone with respect then all would be fine. But when they don’t act as they should we get have every right to point it out until they do!
FTS is right about that — the severence issue should have been ironed out before the merger, and Dept of Labor should have insisted on it.
I wonder why the unions have made ZERO noise about the severance issue?? Could it be that they are the ones holding the cash up because of frivilous grievances?? nah, no way,that just couldn’t be…I heard that those not in the unions received their severance a month or two ago. Probably wrong again.
Everyone knows it’s OPI that’s trying to weasel out of its severance commitment. They swore up and down that everyone would get paid but now that they see Gannett may be on the hook for some of it, they suddenly won’t stand behind their words.
A grievance does not stop the parties from coming to an agreement, so at ANY time OPI could put things in writing and settle everything overnight. They could pay severances at ANY time. They are trying to get away with not paying.
still waiting for the Star-Tizer to do something interesting. like i said before…
its like watching grass grow.