By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Staff Writer
After 145 years, The Advertiser is embarking on a new adventure tomorrow with a hibiscus in our masthead. I wonder what the ghosts of the past would have to say?
My guess is that Mark Twain, who we turned down for a job 135 years ago, would write one of his hilarious Letters from the Sandwich Islands. Robert Louis Stevenson might pen another erudite letter to the editor of The Advertiser.
Jack London would put his feet on the publisher’s kitchen table and give out a lot of free advice the way he used to.
It’s not just having a hibiscus in our masthead. Tomorrow we’re coming out with an afternoon edition. The want-ad section, meanwhile, will soon be as colorful as the Sunday funnies.
We have so many new reporters and editors in the newsroom — 30, count ‘em, 30 — that we’re sitting on each other’s laps.
These are the results of the breakaway of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin from the 38-year-old Hawai‘i Newspaper Agency, through which the the Bulletin and Advertiser shared production facilities. We’re back to competing head to head the way we did when I started as a general-assignment reporter in 1951.
Bud Smyser, at the Star-Bulletin, is another newsman who remembers what it was like.
In those days, the role of the two papers was reversed.
Wayne Damon, treasurer of The Advertiser, wondered from week to week whether he would be able to meet the payroll. When we covered a volcano eruption on the Big Island, Advertiser reporters slept on the pool tables in Sammy’s Bar in Pahoa.
Now, the Bulletin is fighting for survival. We welcome the Bulletin’s rejuvenation and the opportunity to compete the old-fashioned way.
Readers can’t help but benefit. Wait until you hear about the prizes you can win.
Nothing will be quite the same. That includes my Mark Twain office, a 10- by 12-foot Museum of Our Honolulu with fine Tongan mat on the floor, and Palauan story boards, old photos and historic posters.
I’ll move across the building in a month. Will someone hook up my brass candlestick telephone, the only one used for business in Honolulu? I don’t know.
Hopefully, there will be room for my 100-year-old roll-top desk and oak filing cabinet. There won’t be space for the bookcase and photo collections, because I’m finally accepting a computer.
The Mark Twain image will probably have to go.
I’ll try for a combination of global society and Pacific islands style.
My problem is, everything has a story, including the koa waste basket and red kerosene lantern. Mayor Eddie Tam’s key to Maui; a homemade Viet Cong bamboo hand grenade holder; Yapese shell money; Kenneth Emory’s archaeology whistle; a ping pong ball from Chinese ping pong diplomacy. ... There are so many stories. Maybe I can save the best ones.
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