Newspapers are having a rough time these days.

If you've read anything about our industry, you know that we are under assault by Google and Yahoo and eBay and Craigslist and every other presence on the Web that competes for our readers and advertisers.

We are fighting for the hearts and minds of a growing populace that no longer has time to sit and read all we have to offer, especially a younger generation who find newspapers a quaint but unnecessary relic of the past.

More and more, people do not like to read a newspaper whose editorial page does not conform to their political point of view. Or they don't like the proliferation of bad news they see on the front page. Or they subscribe to the theory that much of what is wrong in the world is the fault of the media.

It's enough to give any newspaper editor a migraine, especially one like me who has been in the job just a few weeks.

But as I studied the pages of "150 Years of Hawai'i's History," the special sections that are inside today's Advertiser, it reinforced for me the power and credibility of newspapers, particularly this one.

That the weekly Pacific Commercial Advertiser, as it was called in 1856, could still be going strong in 2006 as The Honolulu Advertiser shows the remarkable resilience of the people who have worked here and the indispensable nature of what they produced.

Those who came before us chronicled an amazing time that took us from monarchy to territory to annexation to statehood and beyond. Not many places in the world have been through such change in a relatively short period.

In our six special sections, today's editors and writers have done a superb job of recreating our history through profiles, news events and milestones that capture the essence of this special place. The pieces were meant to be snippets of our history that would be easy to digest and entertaining to read.

Putting together such a project is fairly daunting. Fortunately, we are blessed with someone on staff who has the historical background, organizational skills and leadership to put it all together — senior editor Anne Harpham, an Advertiser employee for 34 years.

After soliciting nominations from our readers, Anne painstakingly drew up lists of historical items that other editors discussed and debated. In the end, we decided not to come up with a definitive number or ranking of events or prominent figures. We just picked from the list what felt right to tell the story.

We hope reading through our 120 pages today will help you to understand why newspapers have been around for so long, and why The Honolulu Advertiser is so essential to the people it serves.

How you get your news in The Advertiser 150 years from now is anyone's guess, and I wouldn't even place a bet.

But I'm certain we'll be here, in some format, telling Hawai'i's story.

Mark Platte is vice president/editor of The Honolulu Advertiser. Reach him at mplatte@honoluluadvertiser.com or 808-525-8080.

Reach Mark Platte at mplatte@honoluluadvertiser.com.