Hmmm. My impression is there’s a lot of interest in the case of Mike Miske, and the current trial, now in its third month since opening statements kicked off the trial on January 22.

So I checked the statistics here, and what I saw confirms that impression.

I compared the number of page views and unique visitors in November and December, to the numbers in January and February, as the trial got underway.

There were an average of 30,490 page views per month in November/December.

That jumped to an average of 58,537 in January and February.

That’s a 92% increase!

Average visitors also increased, although not as dramatically.

The average number of unique visitor per month jumped from 14,464 to 19,263, an increase of 33%.

Then in March, the number of page views jumped again, although the number of unique visitors was down.

These are “almost” final numbers for the month as of about 5 a.m. on Sunday, March 31.

March page views: 67,919, up about 16% from the January/February average.

March visitors: 18,166, down 5.7% from the past two month average, but still well above the November-December average.

It’s pretty clear that most of those 18,000+ visitors are not regulars.

My guess is that there’s a relatively small core of regular readers who check in regularly to see what’s happening, and who make up most of those page views. My guess is that there are probably 1,000 or so people who come back regularly, every day or two, and account for the bulk of the monthly page views. The rest of the visitors probably only stop by once or twice in the course of the month.

So iLind.net is not exactly “mass media,” but I consider it an indication of a respectable readership, especially with the paucity of other news about the Miske trial.

It wasn’t an auspicious beginning.

Yesterday, Hawaii’s news industry underwent a seismic shift, with the sale of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, along with its immediate parent company, Oahu Publications, Inc., which publishes the newspapers on Kauai and Hawaii Island, and the chain of well over 100 other newspapers formerly owned by Canadian publisher David Black. Although the sale has potentially widespread implications for news consumers, advertisers, and communities across the state, you wouldn’t know it as a reader of the Star-Advertiser.

When I got up early Friday morning, I checked in with the headlines at Google News, and quickly ran into a link to a story about the sale in the Star-Advertiser. I clicked through to read how the newspaper reported the change. This is what appeared.

I searched Staradvertiser.com. Nothing to be found.

So I went outside and brought in the print version, which was waiting in our driveway. I found the story, published without a byline, buried inside at the bottom of page 11.

And it was really just a smiley-face press release, not a piece of business reporting.

But even that meager reporting was effectively and efficiently scrubbed from the online version.

So the shift in ownership to a newspaper company that hails from the deep South isn’t off to a good start, at least if you regularly turn to the daily newspaper for news.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Throughout the several months between the time that Black Press filed in a Canadian court for protection from its creditors, and through the process leading up to Friday’s transfer of ownership, the newspaper failed to cover its own story. Interested readers had to turn to reporting by the publisher of a small community newspaper in Canada, and a Seattle-area news blog.

Looking back, the transition in March 2001, when David Black closed on his purchase of the “old” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, it was very different.

The first day of publication under Black’s ownership featured extensive reporting on the deal and its impact, going far beyond the kind of puff-piece journalism reflected in Friday’s single buried-and-then-disappeared story.

Three reporters had been assigned to the story, and they did their job. They dug into the story and reported. Click on the beginning of the tale, below, to see all that was printed that day about the transfer of ownership.

Sadly, the Star-Advertiser, under new ownership, failed its first test.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser and dozens of “sister” newspapers owned by the Canadian publisher, Black Press, will be taken over by the end of this week by a group of lenders after the newspaper chain failed to receive any other offers.

Thanks to Civil Beat’s Sunshine Blog for pointing to the latest news on the Black Press liquidation by Post Alley/Seattle.

Post Alley came up with several scoops, and I highly recommend checking out the full story using the link above.

First, no other offers were submitted while the whole newspaper chain was open to bidders, so the newspapers will be turned over to a lender group in a deal expected to close this Friday, March 22.

Second, it appears there’s no pot of gold at the end of this long tunnel for longtime publisher David Black.

In the end, it appears the family owners of Black Press Ltd. will walk away from the newspaper business debt-free but with little else to show for the nearly five decades that founder David Black spent building the company through steady acquisition of publications north and south of the border.

Third, there was some good and bad news for the Black newspapers recently.

The good news (for the company, at least) is that the Federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which backstops insolvent corporate pension funds, settled a $45 million debt owed following Black’s sale of the Akron Beacon Journal, taking just 5 cents on the dollar owed. The $45 debt was settled for a $2 million payment, Post Alley reported.

And then the amazingly bad news. While the Star-Advertiser and other Black newspapers were circling the drain, the Hawaii properties were hit by a ransomware attack which froze their financial systems. So while the Black Press newspapers, including the Star-Advertiser, were able to be printed, the newspaper was unable to invoice advertisers or subscribers.

Civil Beat’s Sunshine Blog dug down into the story and provided additional details via a recent bankruptcy court filing.

The company was able to bargain the initial $4 million demand down to just $150,000, Civil Beat reported. So perhaps it should be seen as on the “good” side of the ledger after all.

In any case, it remains to be seen what will happen to the Star-Advertiser when it becomes a far-flung piece of the Carpenter Media chain.