Letter to the editor

The following was sent last night to Frank Bridgewater, editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Dear Mr. Bridgewater,

Someone has no doubt already proposed this, but I thought I’d write anyway.

The STAR-BULLETIN is now billing itself, as I saw from the newspaper stand this morning, as Hawaii’s first compact newspaper. It seems to me that the worth of this trendy phrase is lost on people who haven’t been following developments in the industry. Perhaps instead of focusing on this conversion, SB could create nodes of interest around which new readers would form.

Could, say, SB select two or three people in the community who would function as editors for a month? For argument’s sake, let’s say that I nominated my boss as an SB editor-for-a-month and he was selected. His site would be www.mystarbulletin.com/stewart. He would select the content that SB (1) gets from news sources and (2) generates itself, and then he would give it his particular slant. For example, his editorial page would consist of opinions he’d selected from those possible—or of opinions he wrote or solicited. His front page would consist of news that was of interest to him and his friends and associates.

His stint as editor would have to be preceded, of course, by some kind of course in SB’s editorial/publishing policy.

I like this idea because it would repackage SB content and resell it based on the strength of the reputation, or cachet let’s say, of the people selected to be editors every month. The banner, look, images, and so forth of SB would be consistent across these editions.

This idea formed as a result of (1) a HUFFINGTON POST article on newspapers that I just read and (2) a casual visit to a store in the heart of Chinatown. My sister, a friend, and I had had lunch at Mei Sum and then, because my friend needed to get a birthday gift for another friend, we went into the store called Into. Into, as you know, is a wonderful interior decorating store that imports stuff from all over the world. The man at the counter, who is one of the owners, told me that his store would be moving to Aina Haina because, as much as he loved the location, Into was losing money. I was very disappointed and said so, and he looked anguished and said he preferred to be in Chinatown and was even the president of the Downtown Merchants’ Association.

If someone such as he were able to create his own edition of SB, I think it would be intriguing, and, I predict, the edition would gain new readers for the paper. This would have to be a money-making proposition, of course. Perhaps SB could charge $10 for a month-long subscription to these special editions or have a special advertising section targeting each month’s set of readers.

In addition to considering individuals as editors, SB could consider groups, e.g., the Iolani (or Punahou) School newspaper staff, the Association of University Women, and so forth.

Thank you for reading this, and best of luck to SB, which I remain loyal to.

Aloha,
Pat