Editor for the Islands

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, a Sunday, the only working newsman at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin was Editor Riley H. Allen. Allen was at his desk at 6, as usual, following a habit of years. Just one hour and 55 minutes later, as the first wave of Japanese bombers swept over Pearl Harbor, Allen had the biggest exclusive of his life. Over at the rival Advertiser, then the only Sunday paper in town, the presses were out of action with a mechanical breakdown. Star-Bulletin Editor Allen, routing an emergency staff from bed, weaving stories from wire dispatches and eyewitness accounts, put out three extra editions before the tragic day was done.

Islanders still talk about Riley Allen's exploit on that Sunday 19 years ago. In 48 years on the Star-Bulletin, he has given them plenty to remember. A lifelong Republican and small-d Democrat. Allen showed his colors privately and in print at every opportunity. In 1912, two years after his arrival in Honolulu from the sports department of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he sparked the crusade that culminated last year in Hawaiian statehood. He backed legislation--opposed by the islands' powerful sugar and pineapple interests--that opened the public schools to children of imported Oriental laborers. A consistent critic of discrimination against any race, he has lived to see Hawaii's eight major ethnic groups blend in a harmony that many mainland states might well copy.

Out of the Rut. One result of Allen's leadership was that the Bulletin grew up. Born as an occasional handbill on downtown storefronts, the paper had gone daily in 1882 and settled into an indolent rut, focusing mostly on the doings along King Street and the arrival and departure of ships. Allen set about extending the paper's horizon, but not without occasional whimsical excursions into island fun. -L-No one could be really sure what would appear on April Fools' Day. Allen once ran a great hoax about the remains of a Viking Ship being uncovered in the sands off Waimanalo Beach, a completely phony yarn that other island newspapers cheerfully picked up and ran straight. The paper periodically loved to "discover" enormous new volcanoes rising from the sea off some isolated island beach.

When it came to the serious job of news gathering, Allen was all business. He was usually the first to arrive for work and the last to leave. At 4:30 one morning in 1949, patrolling an emergency meeting of the territorial legislature, gearing to cover an impending dock strike. Editor Allen took pity on the sole surviving staffer and chauffeured him home. "Now, don't come in till 6:30," he said indulgently--then drove briskly back to work.

For years he had his own chair in the proof room--and occupied it at every edition. Complaints from readers usually wound up on the editor's desk, and once, when an irate woman subscriber complained that her carrier was dropping the paper in a puddle, Editor Allen delivered a fresh copy himself. After putting in a twelve-hour work day, Allen often headed straight for the nearest community banquet, where he managed a few words in the language of the occasion, be it Japanese, Chinese, Korean or English.

On with the News. Half a century of energetic Allen direction has clearly established the evening Star-Bulletin as the conservatively Republican voice of conservatively Republican Hawaii. In a city that rises early and does not get around to the news until the sun slides over the Waianae Range, it has a comfortable, growing circulation lead over the morning Advertiser--103,180 to 59,679. The Advertiser's banner red headlines and high feature count are not likely to pull it abreast of the paper that carries 50% more columns of news each day, keeps 69 men in the newsroom (to the Advertiser's 39), has a larger correspondent network, with staffers in all the outer Hawaiian islands and stringers in Tahiti, Samoa, the Cook Islands and the U.S. Some 12,500 outer islanders also get the Star-Bulletin daily, by air; another 9,904 Hawaiians in Hilo, on Hawaii Island, take the Tribune-Herald, which is owned by the Star-Bulletin.

Last week, at 76, Editor Allen left the Star-Bulletin's newsroom for good. The 1954 death of Joseph R. Farrington, son of the paper's founder and longtime Hawaii delegate to the U.S. Congress, generated a court fight for control between Farrington's widow Betty and his sister, wife of General Edmond H. Leavey (ret.), ex-president of the International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. Betty Farrington won a 2-1 majority, but lost the services of her editor and friend. In appointing Editor Allen as a trustee of the Farrington estate, the court stipulated that Allen would have to give up all participation in the newspaper's editorial affairs. He chose to be a trustee and turned the paper over to his able second-in-command: Managing Editor William Ewing, 56, a mainland-trained newsman who has worked with Riley Allen for 24 years.

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