Thurston Twigg-Smith, publisher of the morning Honolulu Advertiser from 1961 to 1993, led the paper from its position as the weaker of Honolulu's two English-laguage dailies through its growth into the largest newspaper in the Islands.
A fifth-generation descendant of Island missionaries, Twigg-Smith served in numerous campaigns in Europe during World War II, then worked in all departments at The Advertiser, which was headed by his uncle, Lorrin P. Thurston, and had been owned and operated by the Thurston family since 1899.
In 1961, Twigg-Smith successfully took control of the paper away from the Thurstons in a surprise move for which his uncle never forgave him.
Twigg-Smith and longtime Advertiser editor George Chaplin were credited with altering the paper's parochial, ultraconservative and even racist reputation to one more in tune with the multi-ethnic community that Hawai'i had become.
A turning point came in 1962 when the paper chose to endorse U.S. Senate candidate Daniel K. Inouye over Republican Ben Dillingham, whose father, Walter, was on The Advertiser's board of directors at the time. Furious, Walter Dillingham resigned.
Still in a financial shaky position, Twigg-Smith was able to save the paper by going into a joint operating agreement with Honolulu's larger competing daily, the evening Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
By the mid-1980s, The Advertiser had overtaken the Star-Bulletin as the leading newspaper. Twigg-Smith remained as president and publisher of The Advertiser until it was sold to Gannett in 1993.
