Oahu Publications has released the list of Advertiser newsroom employees who will have jobs at the new Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Here’s the list as circulated in an email from S-B editor Frank Bridgewater:
To: All
From: Frank
I am pleased to be able to announce that the following journalists from The Advertiser will be joining us as we embark on our new life as the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:
CITY DESK
Editor: Marsha McFadden
ACE: Dan Woods
Reporters
William Cole
Rob Perez
Derrick DePledge
Dan Nakaso
Mary Vorsino
Michael Tsai
Columnist
Lee Cataluna
BUSINESS
Editor: David Butts
Reporters
Andrew Gomes
Alan Yonan
Sean Hao
EDITORIAL
Deputy: Stephen Downes
Writer: Vicky Viotti
SPORTS
Deputy: Curtis Murayama
Reporters
Steven Tsai
Ann Miller
PAGE DESIGNER
Matt Schick
PHOTO
Bruce Asato
UNIVERSAL DESK
John Bender
Martha Hernandez
Joe Guinto
FEATURES
Editor: Christie Wilson
TGIF editor: Elizabeth Kieszkowski
Film/TV reporter: Mike Gordon
There are stories in today’s Honolulu Advertiser by Rick Daysog, perhaps his last for the newspaper, and by Erika Engle in the Star-Bulletin.
Daysog’s story provides much more context. The newsroom of the merged newspaper will have substantially more employees than the current Star-Bulletin, but fewer than the Advertiser. Daysog reports more than 400 people will be out of work on Monday.
Engle’s story reflects the difference in mood between the two newsrooms. While the Advertiser is in the final countdown of a newspaper deathwatch, Engle says S-B staffers are happily heading into this next phase.
Engle does slip in that the new Star-Advertiser will return to a broadsheet format, abandoning the “compact” tabloid look, although no other details are forthcoming.
Back at the Advertiser, while most reporters are preparing for unemployment while getting constantly changing information about health coverage and severance, senior managers have been allowed to walk off with their company computers and iPhones, although not all did so. I’m told at least one was spotted loading an office printer into a car. I wonder what happens if reporters try a similar move? Let me guess.
And art work that once graced the 3rd floor management offices has been shipped off to Guam, former home of the Advertiser’s last Gannett publisher, Lee Webber. I guess it wasn’t part of the buyout deal?
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It’s an absolute crime that solid reporters have been cast away liked yesterday’s TV listings while certain destructive and despised managers have quickly reinvented themselves to wreak havoc elsewhere and an utterly useless publisher has slinked away with the drapes.
hmmm. Engle mentions Wanda Adams, Ferd Lewis, and Dave Shapiro as columnists, but Frank’s list does not.
What gives?
what a stark contrast between the two reports… goodbye two newspaper town…
Gigi: Wanda Adams alluded to a column in her Taste blog yesterday. I’d imagine that as columnists they won’t be on the regular payroll but maybe freelancers.
Ian, that’s a pretty cheap, unsubstantiated slap about a “senior manager” stealing property — paints all of us with a filthy brush at a time the entire staff is trying to pull together to get through the next few days. As for Webber, I’m sure not standing up for him, but he brought most of that crap in his office from Guam so what’s the problem with him taking it back? Workmen have been here the last several days removing the few remaining art pieces that belong to Twigg-Smith and there may have been a few of those remaining in the executive offices. Believe me, they weren’t part of the sale.
Well, I didn’t mean to say they were stealing company property. I wrote they were allowed to take company computers and other equipment assigned to them. Some, I’m told, did so. Others did not and instead properly returned all those inventoried items. If that’s not correct, I apologize and will go back to my sources for clarification.
Oh, spare me the whining. Shapiro’s snide and slanderous scribbling alone has forever forfeited the rights of anyone associated with controlling the Advertiser’s content to ever complain to anyone about anything inaccurate or perceived as a cheap shot. There’s plenty more, and anyone honest who’s paid attention knows it damn well. There’s more dirty laundry at 605 Kapiolani Blvd. than the dingiest dive on Hotel Street.
Ian, the broadsheet format of the soon-to-debut Star-Advertiser has been previously reported.
http://www.hsblinks.com/2gr
Also, I think today’s entry at least slightly misrepresents what I said about the mood in the Star-Bulletin newsroom.
This is what you said I reported:
“Engle says S-B staffers are happily heading into this next phase.”
This is what I reported:
At the same time the former Advertiser journalists are arriving, the Star-Bulletin has been happily welcoming the return of eight newsroom co-workers, laid off a year ago due to the economy. Together, we move into a future of continued service to you, the reader we serve.
I am a Waikiki resident with no business ties or personal connections to our local newspaper industry.
For the past few years I quit buying the Star-Bulletin because I determined the paper was not worth buying. Even when presented with free copies on the bus or in sandwich shops or online, my first choice everyday was making sure I read the Honolulu Advertiser first. If I read the Bulletin occasionally it was for Richard Borreca’s column only.
In my opinion, the Advertiser was Honolulu’s paper of record, much like the New York Times is compared to the NY Post. No comparison.
I am going to be greatly upset if the Advertiser begins resembling the old Star-Bulletin. What is up with the new managers? If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Fine. Go ahead and buy the Advertiser, but don’t re-make it into a failed newspaper.
I sure hope we don’t start waking up to the same salacious headlines and tacky editorials the Bulletin ran for years.
I suspect I may not be alone with these concerns. I have a strong hunch the old Advertiser will be sorely missed.
I’m sorry to inform you, then, that the “new” paper IS the Star-Bulletin with a new name and a slightly larger staff. Literally.
The computers and iPhones and such are probably Star-Bulletin property, as it was an asset sale. As many of us recall, when Gannett disposed of the Star-Bulletin, Rupert Phillips and his thugs looted the office, even shipping off bolts of Star-Bulletin logo fabric and pictures of the Farringtons. Nobody on the staff could “steal” paperclips or whatever, because Liberty posted security guards at all the exits and to constantly lean over us while we were trying to work. Is that happening now?
Believe me, nobody is happy about this. At the Star-Bulletin, we feel more like lucky survivors, not victors.
The columnists and bloggers are technically a different group than the newsroom hires.
Burl, if you’d like to come over and personally make sure I’m not stealing any of David Black’s paper clips, it would be really great to catch up. I know a lot of people here would love to see you.
Are Advertiser people being frisked by Gannett/Liberty security guards? I didn’t know that.
I don’t see the word “stealing” anywhere in Ian’s report. I do see the words “allowed to walk off with.” But I don’t see any denial in Jim Kelly’s retort.
True or False?
And did anybody inventory “that crap” that went to Guam, since Webber only brought “most of it” here?
As for “cheap, unsubstantiated slaps,” there have been SO many printed in the Advertiser, including its editorial pages, that such a thin-skinned, blind-to-irony reaction is just laughable.
Some of the reporting has been great, but some has been pathetic. The Advertiser and its bumbling bosses could never withstand even a cursory investigation by a credible journalism outlet or an audit by professional managers. The crap some have done and lied about, and gotten away with, is just sickening.
Send in the sausage inspectors and get a load of the tainted tripe factory.
Yet that level of product was head and shoulders above what the Bulletin has been putting out since the Black takeover.
So far, there’s no evidence presented here for the prosecution, so how can Kelly be expected to spike this rumor? None of us is watching all the comings and goings. We’re trying to get work done, in fact.
As for the art inventory, I have no personal knowledge of that but, knowing Twigg, I sincerely doubt he let anyone sneak off with his stuff. Seriously.
The real news, I guess, is that Webber is returning to Guam?
No one is talking about this, but Honolulu is losing an incredibly talented journalist in this — Jim Kelly, who is off to a paper in Palm Springs.
He elevated PBN as editor there and did the same with Tizer’s editorial pages.
It’s a loss for the community. Same thing with loss of work done by Rick Daysog, Jim Dooley and Gordon Pang.
I couldn’t agree more.
I risked calling myself obsequious in writing highly of Jim Kelly before so this time I will just say, what a waste; why buy the Advertiser if you’re gonna just dump the S-B’s board and staff into it? I mean there’s a reason the Advertiser had larger circulation. And what will happen with Kelly in CA and his other (better?) half still here?
Rick has landed in a good place, Gordon will be a huge loss regarding Honolulu Hale happenings, and, as for Dooley, well, I don’t think he didn’t display much enthusiasm for his current beat anyway so maybe he’s looking to go back to broadcast journalism or perhaps take up book writing?
And Honolulu readers are losing Greg Wiles, too, the best business reporter in town and a man whom I have proudly called a friend for more than 30 years.
I’m with Mike. The town is losing a titan of talent in Mr. Wiles, not to mention a true gentleman.
Well, it’s not news around here, but yes.
What I wonder is whether Ian’s source knew the printer to be company issue? I’ve had at least one boss who hated the company stuff and brought her own printer, and other equipment. Just saying.
Finally, it would be OPI’s decision whether or not to send security guards down here if they were afraid of looting.
Have to say, I’m almost packed up and there wasn’t much of value that would tempt me. One pretty decent novel, but it’s an overdue library book, which I’ve just returned, at a cost of $7.50. I swear, I singlehandedly pay at least one library salary in overdue fines alone.
Jeez, all I got to keep from the News-Chronicle were my award plaques and a clock with the paper’s logo on it.