CHAPLIN, George 1914-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born April 28, 1914, in Columbia, SC; died of complications from a fall February 17, 2003, in Arlington, VA. Journalist, editor, and author. Chaplin was a longtime editor of the Honolulu Advertiser. A graduate of Clemson College, where he earned a B.S. in 1935, Chaplin worked as the city editor for the Greenville, South Carolina, Reporter for seven years and attended graduate school at Harvard University for a year before the start of World War II. In 1942 he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to edit the armed forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, in Honolulu. After the war he worked as a managing editor at several papers, including the Camden, New Jersey, Courier-Post, the San Diego Journal, and the New Orleans Item, before returning to Honolulu as an associate editor for the Advertiser in 1958. From 1959 to 1986 Chaplin was the 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, Chaplin was an editor-at-large for several years before returning to New Jersey in 2001. In addition to his journalism work, he 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).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

periodicals

Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2003, p. B21.

New York Times, February 21, 2003, p. A27.

Washington Post, February 22, 2003, p. B6.