What Now? Part Five

29 July Update: I just found out about Coconut Girl and her take on what she calls "the sad state of Big Island newspapers."
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Hunter Bishop reports on his blog that the Hawaii Island Journal might come back, probably in August or September.

By chance on Monday or Tuesday night I saw part of the televised testimony before the County Council. Peter Serafin spoke, followed by a woman from the ad department (I think). She said that the three main departments of the paper often operated as three independent entities, and thus were out of sync. Senior writer Alan McNarie opened with a remark that Serafin's and the woman's testimony were both true but that the paper's demise was more "complex" than that. The bulk of his testimony blamed Honolulu Weekly's 2005 acquisition for making the paper "not local." He also said bloggers are "inherently biased," as if papers aren't.

I'm curious about the Island Sun, whose inaugural run of 5,000 copies might mean it'll be hard to find an issue. No website that I can see either. And will people read the Big Island Weekly, Hawaii Free Press (the black sheep of the Big Island alternative media), Island Sun, and a resurgent Hawaii Island Journal? I'd like to think so. The only thing is that BIW, IS, and HIJ might be clones of one another. Each may be a liberal-left paper with lots of arts, some politics, etc., but each should develop its own personality. Book, movie, music, and art reviews, obviously. Sports coverage (see the Village Voice's Jockbeat for inspiration). Cartoons. Big Island Weekly's publication of Berido's cartoons are a good step in the right direction.