I'm headed out to Leeward Community College next week to speak to Bob Biggs' Political Science class about newspapers and politics. The list of questions Biggs sent me from his students included: "Why is there a newspaper monopoly in Honolulu?" The assumption underlying the question is that there is, indeed, a newspaper monopoly - just like there's a giant alligator running around under Manhattan.
What actually exists in Honolulu is the product of a 1970 federal law, called the Newspaper Preservation Act. It preserves the few remaining two-newspaper cities in the U.S. by allowing failing papers to combine non-editorial operations with those of would-be surviving newspapers and to continue to publish.
The news staffs of Honolulu's two separately owned dailies are fiercely competitive and proudly independent. It's actually against this law for them to combine any editorial function.
Gannett owns our competitor and manages Hawaii Newspaper Agency, the combined business operation which many critics have attacked. They forget how much cheaper and more profitable it would be for HNA to publish only one newspaper - a true monopoly.
Without the Newspaper Preservation Act there would be only one daily paper in Honolulu - and it could be one powerful alligator.
