Trouble in paradise: Hawaii's newspaper crisis

For decades, The Honolulu Advertiser has fought a circulation war with its principal rival, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Both papers are circulated mainly on the island of Oahu, the most populated and developed of the Hawaiian islands that contains the state capital and most of Hawaii's tourist hotels. Examining both of these newspapers reveals a format that is typical of American regional dailies: halfway between a tabloid and a broadsheet in their size, design and editorial approach. The papers contain a mixture of local news generated by their own news staff combined with international news from agency feeds and syndicated columns from sources in the continental USA. The similarities between the papers are so great that neither seems to have any appeal to specific demographic or special-interest groups.