When The Honolulu Weekly Moved To Maui
The little red newspaper boxes on the street are empty.
It’s Wednesday, the day the Honolulu Weekly usually comes out. One of their signature red boxes sits on about every second or third block in Kaimuki, near our offices. It’s one of my regular lunchtime reads with its mix of serious news analysis alongside quirky features like a “Wish list” that includes “Crackseed that won’t kill us.”
The Weekly is where I got my start as an intern out of college. It’s always been close to my heart.
But when David Black bought the Honolulu Advertiser and merged it with the Star-Bulletin, he shut down the Star-Bulletin’s printing presses over in Kaneohe. That meant that several Honolulu newspapers — including the Weekly — would have to find new homes.
Faced with substantial rate hikes and given a tight window to completely redesign the paper to fit the Advertiser’s press in Kapolei, the Weekly moved to Maui.
I wondered what that would mean. Today’s empty boxes tell the story.
My call with Ragnar Carlson, Honolulu Weekly’s editor: “The increase in our rates was going to be substantial and the decrease in our news hole was going to be substantial,” Carlson said. He’d just followed the paper to Maui, seen it through its first turn on printing presses there, and boarded a plane to fly back. The paper itself travels by boat and, judging by today’s red boxes, is subject to serious delays.
“Readers can imagine what it means to be forced into a position that we’re printing a local newspaper on another island and shipping it over by boat,” Carlson said. “It requires a lag time between the time that these stories are reported and the time that they are available to readers.”
“The stories we put in print really can’t change between about Friday and Wednesday,” he said.
What he’s saying is that the Weekly can’t respond to breaking news anymore. Just one of the many changes during Week One in the age of Honolulu as a one-newspaper town. Here’s hoping that the red boxes get filled on Thursday.
