And now it begins. The monopoly is here.
Clients that formerly had printing done by the old MidWeek presses are now hearing what their new rates will be after the Star-Advertiser consolidation.
I’m told Honolulu Weekly, which has been printed by Oahu Publications, was told that its rates would be going up somewhere in the neighborhood of 20%, and that it would have to be reduced to the size of Advertiser’s TGIF weekend section (which I measure as 10-1/2 x 11 inches). Smaller size, less space for advertising, less income.
And others have gotten worse news. One local classifieds publication, a competitor to the Advertiser’s Pennysaver, reportedly was quoted a rate almost double what they previously paid.
I understand that Honolulu Weekly has responded by taking their printing to the Maui News, complete with a new schedule set by Young Brothers for delivery to Honolulu.
Former Star-Bulletin advertisers are probably also going to be facing similar increases, but I’m sure we’ll be hearing about those soon enough.
And back at the Star-Bulletin newsroom, soon to be the Star-Advertiser, at least one staffer has been removing items posted by friends on their Facebook wall, worried about management surveillance.
“Our social media activity is being watched more carefully these days,” the staffer commented to a friend.
Sam Slom, writing in Hawaii Reporters yesterday, described plans to increase the HR footprint.
Watch for new features, more investigative reporting, emphasis on Neighbor Island news and some familiar names soon as we attempt to rescue some good reporters who were laid off by the new paper. Go to our website, http://www.savehawaiinews.com and if you have an idea, a comment, or suggestions, sign up and join the community advisory board.
We are also negotiating for a web press and a commercial site for an expanded media center. There will be a printed side-by-side edition (weekly initially) to the online Reporter, and greater use of technology and local reporters’ talents.
More interesting are Slom’s description of conditions of the unsuccessful “sale” of the Star-Bulletin.
According to Slom, no inventory of equipment was available, the press was offered without maintenance/repair records, the sale included only the starbulletin.com domain but not its archive or web site, audited financials were not available, etc., etc. Very interesting.
I also flagged this item about the Advertiser closing from the Seattle Weekly, and another from the Reality Bites Back blog.
There’s a message from Dayton Morinaga urging paddlers to contact the Star-Advertiser to urge coverage of ocean sports.
My fear now is that coverage of ocean sports will be downsized at this new newspaper.
While I respect my colleagues at the Star-Bulletin, their coverage of ocean sports has been inconsistent. They have not had a full-time reporter write stories on ocean sports for several years now and are currently covering it with “freelancers.”
Hawaii’s state sports truly deserve better.
And so it goes.
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Senator Dan Inouye announced neutrality in the Governor’s primary race. This major bit of news wasn’t in either the Star Bulletin or the Advertiser, and was only covered as far as I’m able to tell on KITV.
The Advertiser did find room to announce that “Red Cross learn-to-swim classes for keiki begin tomorrow (10:45 a.m)”.
I know Dan Inouye’s neutrality is news. While I’m glad for the keiki learning to swim, news it is not.
I’ve been on the front page of both newspapers for happy and heartbreaking moments in my life. Like the closing of Aloha Airlines, this is one of those historic and sad times in our Hawai’i nei. Instead of showing respect on the tarmac in solidarity, we’ll be feeling the absence of our newspaper in our livingrooms and at our kitchen tables for years to come.
That’s what happens when reporters are preoccupied cleaning our their desks and saying farewells on their last day of work.
We’ll see how the community responds to this mistreatment. Somehow I doubt many will see it for what it is.
I sometimes wonder what color the sun is in the world where Slom lives. He wants you to believe that his claims of the SB not willing to provide info for the sale were not looked into a CLOSELY MONITORED US JUSTICE DEPT process. I find it appalling that someone of his stature would just either just simply make things up or greatly exaggerate his claims. Didn’t he say in the Tizer that he didn’t have any money anyway? When pigs fly and hell freezes over you will see his “land and press”. What a hoot.
It was probably looked into … and looked right over. The process was extremely rushed and Black/henchman Francis used the media pulpit to put out a narrative that essentially doomed the Bulletin to non-sale.
That was, as you now see, the point all along, to kill the competition in the market. Slom may not have had the money, but that’s how business works, you think people pay cash out of their own pockets for everything? Slom needed solid info to work up a good business plan to get loans and attract investors. Black denied this.
In the end the most important thing Justice missed is that both organizations had strong financial underpinnings, and in a deep recession, neither paper was truly hurtling toward insolvency. Black’s story about losing so much money conveniently forgets to mention the nice profits he made from the Midweek.
The two papers should have been allowed to battle it out until the end, rather than being allowed to game the system by creating a sanctioned monopoly.
A sanctioned monopoly is what existed under the old Hawaii Newspaper Agency due to the appallingly protectionist Failing Newspaper Act. Every December like clockwork advertising rates were increased, and while news coverage was better than it has been recently and ever will be again, the moral corruption of politicians conveying benefits on the news business is, one hopes, happily over.
The real reason I’m told that the weakly moved the printing to Maui is the significant change to its size. The press in Kapolei can’t print the size they are currently is what they were told.
“You don’t know what you’ve got ’til its gone”
I was asked to come in to help make an assessment of the photo department’s assets on behalf of Slom and Zimmerman.
The listing of assets was incomplete and vague. For example, cameras were listed by model number without serial numbers or its condition. A camera body was said to have a “lens” with no details as to focal length or aperture. No listing of batteries, chargers, flash units or any other required accessories which should have been part of the inventory.
Most of the Star-Bulletin’s computers were far beyond end-of-life and cannot run the current operating system (Snow Leopard). If a newsroom’s software required the latest version of OS X, then purchasing those machines would be a waste.
The press that was being offered for sale was hardly worth salvaging and was assessed by an industry expert to be in bad need of an overhaul.
The lack of a detailed inventory meant bidding in the blind. It would be like buying a used car but not being allowed to see the car or even be told exactly what car you’re bidding on.
In the end, it would make a lot more sense for someone to start a completely new enterprise than to purchase old equipment that would have to be scrapped anyway. The only item of real value would have been the newspaper’s name. Everything else, including much of the older archives wasn’t part of the sale.
In the broader view, it’s better that the Star-Bulletin wasn’t purchased since it meant that most employees were able to keep their jobs and transition smoothly to the new Star-Advertiser.
It also means that Slom and Zimmerman will have the time to carefully formulate a business plan for a new venture, rather than scramble to continue the publication of the Star-Bulletin without interruption. They’re also free to start off in a whole new direction, rather than have to continue the legacy of an existing newspaper.
Sorry, but in the broader view, Hawaii just lost many of its best newspaper journalists at the Honolulu Advertiser, including Daysog and Dooley, and simply kept many of the good designers and lite journalists at the Bulletin. This is supposed be better? For whom? It’s certainly not better for this state and it’s definitely not better for the hundreds of Advertiser employees out of work. We definitely appreciate the detailed inventory facts but your view is a bit narrow.
Thank you, Ian. This is the kind of reporting I’m hungry for at this time, on this subject. Keep it up!
But Dean….really? The cameras? That was a deal breaker? How much could that possibly have cost even if you had to buy all new equipment?? (even with batteries!) What, 30,40 maybe 50k? Using your car analogy, you are saying you can’t determine tha value of the car because you were not able to open the glove box. And if the computers were so far past their useful life how do they manage to publish everyday?? Guess they are really screwed now since I don’t believe any new equipment was trucked in to publish the Star/Advertiser.
Bigger Picture — The camera listing was only one example of the lack of good information available to a potential buyer. It was part of the process in which I had direct involvement and considerable expertise. Of course there was a lot more that went into bidding for the Star-Bulletin than just cameras.
As for the Bulletin’s Macs, the computers in the current newsroom work OK with the software they have in place right now. In fact, the Star-Bulletin newsroom continued to run OS 9 long after most Mac users had switched to OS X.
But today it would make no sense for a new startup newsroom to buy a bunch of old and heavily used computers.
The latest copy desk system, such as Adobe inCopy, won’t run on Power PC Macs. In fact, much of Adobe’s latest CS5 software, including inDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop, will run only on Intel Macs. And the same goes for Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system: Intel Macs only.
To include dozens of old G4’s in a bid would be a complete waste of limited funds since they can’t run the software.
It would be far wiser to invest in new equipment and spend time to get off to a good start. And that’s the point I was making.
Geez, misguided…you sure are. Lite journalists? Didn’t Rob Perez win most of the investigative reporting awards over the last several years?? Cole, Perez, DePledge, Nakaso, Vorsino, Tsai, Gomes, Yonan, Hao, Downes, Viotti, Murayama, Miller, Lewis, Asato, Gordon….all sound like like heavyweights to me….I know it’s human nature to just keep mentioning the names that didn’t get picked up but I think you owe those mentioned above an apology. They are great reporters and I’m sure I’ve missed some cause the total hire was twenty eight, I think.
I think the “lite journalists” comment was a snide reference to the Star-Bulletin’s reporters. I don’t think these reporters are lite at all, but the David Black Star-Bulletin has constrained them generally–but not always–to writing lite.
Well Ian, have you talked to any of them? what examples did they give you where you could draw such a conclusion. Now YOU owe your former friends and co-workers at the SB an apology. What a slap in the face. I hope some of them respond to your accusation. I know several of them (but certainly not all) and I have never heard any of them say they have been “constrained”. But in any event, isn’t that an impressive list of journalists they picked up? Seems to me that if ya can’t hire everyone they did a pretty good job nabbing the best talent.
The constraints have been obvious. News hole. Story length. News judgment. Editorial direction. Under Black’s ownership, the Star-Bulletin has excelled more at design and soft features rather than at hard news.
FWIW to set up a professional photojournalist to work, cameras, lenses, laptop, and all accessories needed you are looking at 20 to$ 25,000 per photographer times 8, minimum number of shooters at either paper, and you are at $200,000.00 for just a basic photo staff. Throw in another 20 to 25,000 for pool equipment, and another 10,000 for studio set up and you good to go to work.
I won’t miss the ridiculous “Breaking News” stories – especially when they kept repeatedly plugging the same “breaking news” story every day for a week about some school bake sale, or every little sports score, draft pick or story, while stubbornly ignoring real news.
The fact they kept constantly insulting us with this shows how tone deaf the HA was, and how they did not deserve to succeed. The SB could have capitalized on this and served a contrasting product, but chose to fight the same fight with less ammo and conviction.
The constant parroting of press releases also made our teeth gnash. In the end, the working staff and journalists were betrayed by the publisher, senior editors and management.
I hope the new SA has learned a lesson, but I strongly doubt it. Thus, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day Honolulu becomes a ZERO-daily paper town.
The Advertiser had a lot of chaff, but it also had the wheat. Ever tried the Star-Bulletin’s site for breaking news? Exercise in futility.
yes, OUCH, i have talked to reporters at the SB who have been “constrained” since Black bought the paper in 2001.
But to be fair to Black, yes Ian, some of the reporters at the SB are lite (at least you didn’t miss my point like defensive OUCH did.) If this truth is snide to you, so be it. It’s still the snide truth.
meanwhile, good story today in the final Episode of the Advertiser. it’s written by Daysog, one of the best local journalists who wasn’t hired. (Sorry, OUCH, I’m not gonna list all the people hired just because I mentioned again that Daysog wasn’t hired!)
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20100606/NEWS01/6060396/Black+paying++125M+for+Advertiser
Whatever…..you are one negative soul. Good luck with living your life with a things suck attitude. I think the SB didn’t hire Daysog so they could leave behind a journalist that someone like you could say, see, they missed one. For what it’s worth, RD is one they missed.