Presstime in Paradise: The Life and Times of The Honolulu Advertiser, 1856-1995
(Chaplin wrote an insider's account of nearly a century an...)
Chaplin wrote an insider's account of nearly a century and half of Advertiser history. He covered the personalities that had worked for the Advertiser over the years and reported on issues and historical events that had a powerful impact on the community.
George Chaplin was a longtime editor of the Honolulu Advertiser. By the time he left in 1986, circulation had increased to 90,000, making it Hawaii’s largest paper.
Background
George Chaplin was born on April 28, 1914, in Columbia, South Carolina, United States to the family of East European immigrants. His father, Morris, was 15 when he left Bialystock, Poland, in 1906 and made his passage across the Atlantic. At Ellis Island, a bureaucrat cut off the beginning and end of his last name, Tschaplinsky. He went to work in a shoe factory near Boston, attended night school and learned to read, write, and speak English. Chaplin's mother, Netty, worked as a seamstress. The family later moved to South Carolina. George also had a sister.
Education
In 1935 George earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Clemson College. That was the place where he also discovered his talent for journalism. During the studies, he was an editor for The Clemson Tiger. In 1940, Chaplin was one of 12 journalists chosen from more than 200 applicants for a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, providing an academic year with faculty status. He specialized in race relations.
The day after graduation George Chaplin got a job as a reporter for $10 a week on the Greenville Piedmont. Two years later, in his early 20s, Chaplin became a city editor.
In 1942 because of the war George enlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to edit the armed forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, in Honolulu. After the war, he served as managing editor of the Camden Courier-Post in New Jersey, then as managing editor of the San Diego Journal, from which he went to take over as editor of the New Orleans Item in 1949. The Item was the largest paper in Louisiana and among Chaplin's favorite editorial topics was statehood for Hawaii.
Those editorials campaigning for statehood brought him to the attention of then-Advertiser publisher Lorrin P. Thurston, who was looking for someone to take over the news operation. In December 1958, on the eve of statehood and the jet age, Chaplin arrived back in Hawaii.
Already in a year and till 1986 Chaplin served as editor-in-chief of the paper, and was widely credited for rescuing it from bankruptcy and making it the most successful newspaper on the island. After leaving his post as editor-in-chief, George was an editor-at-large for several years before returning to New Jersey in 2001.
Chaplin was also a president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
In addition to his journalism work, Chaplin was the coeditor of Hawaii 2000: A Continuing Experiment in Anticipatory Democracy (1973) and author of Presstime in Paradise: The Life and Times of The Honolulu Advertiser, 1856-1995 (1998).
George Chaplin helped to save the Honolulu Advertiser from bankruptcy. Besides, he was involved in a wide array of bold initiatives and civic causes that included his aggressive campaign for statehood, the creation of the East-West Center, the building of the Arizona Memorial, and an unprecedented statewide dialogue on growth and planning in 1970 in preparation for the year 2000.
In the early 1970s, Chaplin launched the Hawaii 2000 campaign, bringing together leaders from throughout the community to begin planning the future. From tourism to traffic, from economic development to environmental protection, the whole community began to cast its eyes forward and ask where it wanted to go.
In 1972, Chaplin was among the first American journalists in China.
(Chaplin wrote an insider's account of nearly a century an...)
Politics
In 1962, from the Advertiser pages, Chaplin decided to endorse for the U.S. Senate a Democratic representative, Dan Inouye.
Views
Chaplin was a proponent of the idea of building a truly pluralistic society where class, race, and religion didn't matter. George himself had experienced prejudice in his college days in South Carolina. At Clemson, a military school, he was taken aside by the colonel and told that he was the top cadet in the graduating class but would not get the honor because he was Jewish.
Chaplin also believed that community leadership was a key part of his job. He pooh-poohed any suggestion that his involvement in community affairs influenced coverage in the newspaper, but the staff knew when an assignment came with the notation "G.C. MUST," there would be no debate about whether to cover the fund-raiser or speech or award ceremony.
Membership
The American Society of Newspaper Editors
,
United States
The East-West Center board of governors
The 1980s Governor's Committee on the Year 2000
Personality
Chaplin was always forward-thinking and couldn't stand inaccuracy.
Quotes from others about the person
Former Advertiser Editor Gerald Keir: "He was a sort of a journalistic godfather to so many people, including me, and changed our careers. He had high standards. Inaccuracy drove him crazy. I remember during a bad stretch of errors, he put up a sign in the newsroom: 'Get it first, but first get it right.'"
Thurston Twigg-Smith, the former owner of The Advertiser and a friend and colleague of Chaplin's for more than 40 years: "He helped bring the whole community together and was the first editor of The Advertiser to actively try to bring all racial groups together and move forward with the growth of the state."
Former Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi: "He's part of the history and the making of the state of Hawai'i. He contributed a lot to the citizenry. I enjoyed him as a warrior."
Laurence Vogel, president, and CEO of Y. Hata & Co. and longtime friend: "George just had a genuineness and an honesty that you rarely find. He always wanted truth and honesty to prevail."
Rabbi Avi Magid, of Temple Emanu-El: "He did everything on this old-style typewriter, a Remington. It was amazing to see increase in technology at The Advertiser, and here's George with the plinkety-plink of his typewriter. He was just a wonderful guy. He really crossed generations from the old-style journalists to the modern era."
John Griffin, who served as editorial page editor under Chaplin: "George always saw himself as a public-spirited person. He would always say there are more important things than a news story, which sounds heretical to some journalists now."
Chaplin's son Stephen: "He had a great intellectual curiosity in history, medicine, culture, a thirst that manifested itself through travel. He went some places because they were important to the U.S. He was in the first group of American editors to go to China. The other reason was to see how other countries handled tourism."
Interests
History, medicine, culture, travel
Connections
On January 26, 1937, Chaplin married Esta Lillian Solomon. They had two children: Stephen and Jerry.
