The book “Presstime in Paradise” by editor George Chaplin details the life and times of the Honolulu Advertiser from 1856 to 1995. The 'Tiser' was one of Honolulu’s first non-government newspapers under the Hawaiian Kingdom, but it no longer exists. There is now the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, which emerged after the Honolulu Star-Bulletin also went away as a separate entity.
Journalist Sophie Cocke, along with University of Hawaiʻi journalism instructor and former KITV News Director Janice Gin, stopped by The Conversation to discuss the changing media landscape.
There is a new report out from the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs, “Hawaiʻi's News Desert: Overcoming a Threat to Democracy and Civil Engagement.” It was released this month, and Cocke compiled the report.
"This report wasn't in any way advocating that we go back to the old days of print paper. It's more about trying to define the problem and how that's affecting civic engagement and democracy, and trying to figure out what the way forward is," Cocke said.
Interview highlights
On the history of newspapers in Hawaiʻi
SOPHIE COCKE: Local newspapers really peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was a period of time in Hawaiʻi where we had a really robust ecosystem for local news. It was really incredible in terms of the diversity of local publications. There were outlets that were dedicated to investigative and enterprise reporting, underground newspapers, single-issue newspapers that focused on environmental issues or the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. And then over the decades and years, we saw this, especially in the past 20 years, this rather precipitous decline, whereas particularly between the years 2000 and present, where today we only have a little over a dozen newspapers still in existence. And that's a decline of, at the height it was about 52, and so the story about what happened to newspapers has been well-told over the years. Essentially, the business model was broken by the internet, and we're still grappling to figure out how to make the business model work. And so we were looking at the erosion and the loss of local publications. But another facet of the research was looking at the decline of reporting power, the loss of reporters. So as the business model was being disrupted, and we had major losses of advertising revenue, newsrooms were being depleted — and in Hawaiʻi over the past 10 years, we've lost about 41% of our newspaper reporters. And the effect of that, I think we all have seen in our daily lives, where the newspapers are becoming increasingly thin, and newsrooms, as they've hemorrhaged reporters and editors, they become less able to adequately cover the important issues facing their communities.
On the state of broadcast television in Hawaiʻi
JANICE GIN: On the broadcast side of the world, I guess the way I position this is that while we see this big decline of news and journalism in general, broadcasting itself, particularly in this market, or not only in this market, is not as dim, as I say. It's like apples and oranges. But the broadcast industry in Hawaiʻi is thriving, and we are seeing more hours of local television. And in fact, one of the stations contacted us after the report to say, ‘Hey, we're even adding more hours of streaming.’ So what does that mean? It means that the local stations have more opportunity to tell the news. The question is, how much new news is there? So my argument has always been that it's great to have 10 hours of broadcast time, but if you're running the same story from one hour to the next hour to the next hour, then how much news is the public getting? They're just getting the same diet. It's the same cereal, it's the same pancake you're getting every day. You're not changing it up. Is it extended? Could be extended conversations, could be a lot of things that are not necessarily happening. And I would say that the impetus for that has everything to do with money and consolidation of what's going on in broadcasting. I don't believe, even though some people believe that broadcast news is going away, or that broadcasting and television is going away because of the internet, because of digital — I think we're here to stay. I think we serve a really big role in our community to share information, particularly in times of emergency, because we are free, over the air, to get the information.
On journalism's role in a democracy
COCKE: When you have communities that can no longer get basic information about what's going on at the local school board, what's going on at their city council or county council meetings, what's going on at the Legislature — it makes it really difficult for them to participate in democracy. Even trying to get information about local elections becomes difficult, the candidates, and so that erosion plays such a huge role, not just in eroding civic engagement and democracy, but also creating a society and communities that are much more polarized, that are operating under a lot of misinformation, a lot of disinformation. On the one hand, we have this loss of local news. On the other hand, people are completely bombarded by this information on the internet that they're increasingly less capable of discerning what is truth versus fact, and what has been reported, and what's spin and what's disinformation. So it just creates communities that, in some ways, are really in peril. ... And one of the correlations I found through the research in terms of looking at the loss of newspapers and reporters is also a real decline in voter participation over the decades, and that is emblematic, in a lot of ways, of just that erosion of civic engagement in an informed public.
What communities are doing to avoid becoming a news desert
GIN: There are communities that have faced serious news desert situations, and there have been people in those communities who found a way to use other resources — I'm not talking money — I'm talking about people to go and get information, use the technology, which is digital, to disseminate that information. But you have to create this idea that who's collecting the information is trustworthy, credible and honest, so that the information I'm telling you about the school board meeting is true. I mean, I've always wanted to read what happened in the school board meeting, not that I really wanted to attend. I just want to know, what did they decide? Who said what? Which leader that I elected into the board said what? How did they vote? All those pieces of information. So what we have is some communities out there in the mainland that are using students or university student projects to be the reporters, and then using the platform, whatever platform that might be, to disseminate that information. How well it's being received? I can't tell you. I just can tell you that those kinds of efforts are being done sometimes, maybe in conjunction with, maybe an NPR station or something like that. But it's really important that we teach the next generation the importance of getting information and sharing the information. And that's what we want. That's what we're afraid of: of having a desert, and we can't do anything about it, and we're going to all thirst.
This story aired on The Conversation on Nov. 24, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.
