The Honolulu Advertiser has offered a voluntary buyout package to most of its employees in an attempt to cut costs and return to profitability, according to a story in today’s Star-Bulletin.

The story by Robert Shikina, which quotes the Newspaper Guild’s Wayne Cahill, reports the Advertiser is indeed currently losing money and may be seeking to shed as many as 100 of its 600 unionized employees.

With Gannett stock now trading below $11 a share, down some 84% in the last five years, the company clearly has to be serious about this turnaround.

Which makes me start to think the unthinkable: Is David Black’s long-term plan really to be the lone survivor and remaining daily in Honolulu?

Black has been quoted as holding out hope for significant profits in Hawaii despite years of having to subsidize operations here. And Gannett doesn’t generally like to compete, choosing instead to buy and hold newspapers which have monopolies in their geographical areas.

So is it conceivable that Gannett could choose to sell the Advertiser? And, if so, could Black end up with the paper? It still seems highly unlikely to me, but perhaps not as crazy an idea as it seemed a year ago.

June Watanabe’s Kokua Line item in Sunday’s Star-Bulletin, “Fields of broken dreams” seemed to demonstrate both the good and bad of the current S-B.

Someone recognized that this was more than just a typical Kokua Line entry, letting June go longer than usual and promoting it to feature status with a bold full-page graphic. And it’s a good tale.

But why didn’t an editor grap the story and see that it could have been much more? After all, it looks like this situation should be rich with documents. It would have taken some time to pursue them, but could have taken the story to a higher level. But the opportunity to go the extra step and add that extra value for the reader was missed. It’s our loss.

I couldn’t help comparing these two bits of info. First, from the SEC, a long list of actions the agency says it has taken during the current financial crisis. But that stands in contrast to a NY Times report that the FBI is woefully short of agents trained to investigate white collar crimes, making it difficult to ramp up for probes of possible criminal actions that got us into this mess.

So depleted are the ranks of the F.B.I.’s white-collar investigators that executives in the private sector say they have had difficulty attracting the bureau’s attention in cases involving possible frauds of millions of dollars.

Since 2004, F.B.I. officials have warned that mortgage fraud posed a looming threat, and the bureau has repeatedly asked the Bush administration for more money to replenish the ranks of agents handling nonterrorism investigations, according to records and interviews. But each year, the requests have been denied, with no new agents approved for financial crimes, as policy makers focused on counterterrorism.

So now it looks like (a) the Bush administration reduced or removed oversight and regulation, then (b) ensured the result it wanted by removing the capacity for enforcing criminal laws in this complex area of white collar crime. A one-two punch.

Okay, now you need some calm space to start the week. Click here for a short video of a weekend morning on the beach in Kaaawa.