And Now There’s One Pro-Rail Newspaper

Home of the Advertiser -- the "News Building" no more.

Call it an old habit, but we’ve always made a point of noting that June 6 has special meaning -- just like December 7. In 1944, June 6 was D-Day, when Allied powers stormed ashore in Normandy to begin the end of the Third Reich.

June 6, 2010 is a kind of D-Day in Honolulu. After 154 years of publication, The Honolulu Advertiser is now Dead, to put it bluntly, taken over by the smaller Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The survivor of the takeover starting tomorrow will be called The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, as we predicted it would be when news of the deal first broke months ago.

Something else we noted on February 26 was what everybody has been saying for months: Honolulu has long benefited from being a two-newspaper town. The Honolulu rail project – which is the subject of this blog – has seemed like two different enterprises, judging from the two newspapers’ coverage.

We won’t review those differences today; you’re invited to read that February 26 post and its links to several others where we’ve written about the disparity in how the newspapers' news columns have assessed the same set of facts.

On this they agreed, however: They both have supported Honolulu rail editorially for reasons detailed time and again. The Bulletin’s October 26, 2009 editorial was typical, and more recently, the Advertiser on May 20 urged all parties to cooperate and finish the job.

The Advertiser will be missed for many reasons, as will many of its journalists who aren't joining the new paper. Here at Yes2Rail, we’ll miss the Advertiser's strong pro-rail editorial position. We look forward to reading the Star-Advertiser and anticipate that it will continue expressing the same positive views about the Honolulu rail project in the tradition of its two predecessors.