Charles Apple

I hate publishing depressing news on a Sunday morning — or any morning, for that matter. But here is the final front page of the Honolulu Advertiser:

Here is the final A1 budget meeting:

From left to right: designer Matt Schick, editorial page editor Jim Kelly, assistant editor Marsha McFadden and designer John Bender. The photo is by Advertiser staff photographer Gregory Yamamoto.

Here’s a message written by departing advertising staffers:

The photo is by staffer Norman Shapiro.

Here’s Matt, putting the final edition to bed last night:

And here is the Saturday crew who worked on today’s final:

Thanks to Advertiser design director Christy Strobel — at the bottom right of that group shot — from whose Facebook feed I “borrowed” these last two pictures.

The Advertiser was a wonderfully-designed newspaper. Even as someone who’s never held a copy in my hands, I’ll miss it greatly.

Christy herself is OK, she tells me. She’s begun work for a company that’s launching a travel web site next month. She writes:

We’re hoping the economy will improve enough to make our timing fortuitous.

All this comes about as a result of Gannett’s decision to sell the Advertiser for $125 million — half of what Gannett paid for the property 19 years ago. The new owners — the Honolulu Star Bulletin — are, in fact, a smaller newspaper than the Advertiser. The Star Bulletin hired a few Advertiser folks to join up but not many. Only 28 of 120 newsroom staffers were ported over. More than 400 Advertiser employees, in all, are out of work.

Over at the Star Bulletin, today’s front page also claims to be a “final edition”:

Monday’s Star Bulletin, after all, will be called the Star Advertiser.

Find the Advertiser’s coverage of its own final edition here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 6th, 2010 at 10:19 am and is filed under Industry woes, News design, Newspapers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.