Posted on: Saturday, September 22, 2001

Star-Bulletin publisher stepping down

Advertiser Staff

Honolulu Star-Bulletin Publisher and Editor in Chief John Flanagan will step down Sept. 30 to become a contributing editor, the Star-Bulletin announced yesterday.

Star-Bulletin President Don Kendall will become publisher, and Managing Editor Frank Bridgewater will direct newsroom operations, according to the announcement.

Flanagan said he is ready for a new challenge after 15 years at the Star-Bulletin.

"I'd like now to pick up where former editor and columnist Bud Smyser left off and offer readers my observations of Hawai'i personalities and events," Flanagan said in the announcement. "Those are big shoes to fill."

Flanagan's columns will appear several times a week in the paper's editorial pages. Flanagan joined the Star-Bulletin as executive editor in 1986. He is also a former news executive of Gannett Co. Inc., serving as editor of the Marin Independent Journal in California and managing editor of the News Journal in Wilmington, Del.

Gannett owned the Star-Bulletin until 1993, when it bought The Honolulu Advertiser and sold the Star-Bulletin to Liberty Newspapers LP. Liberty attempted to close the Star-Bulletin in 1999 through an agreement with Gannett, but the state attorney general's office went to court to challenge the closure. Liberty sold the paper to Canadian newspaper operator David Black last year.

Black said Flanagan "deserves a lot of the credit for saving the Star-Bulletin. He battled every day for more than a year to keep it alive."