HawaiiReporter.com’s 9th Anniversary Gala

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HawaiiReporter.com held its 9th Anniversary Gala at the Waialae Country Club on October 15. The celebration commemorated the 9th year for the daily news website, often billed as the first in Hawaii

The Friday night gala was a successful party that featured recognition to the site’s financial contributors, reporters, staff, and supporters. A silent auction was held and the keynote speaker was Jason Stverak of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.

HawaiiReporter.com is operated by publisher, editor and founder Malia Zimmerman and her business partner, Jay McWilliams. The two ladies started the site back in 2002 with hardly any knowledge or experience in the world of web publishing. They have grown the site from its humble beginings as a hackable Microsoft run blog to a premiere news and opinion source now running on a WordPress back end.

Over the years HawaiiReporter.com has run several high profile stories including the sagas of the Koloko Dam disaster on Kauai, slave labor in American Samoa, the woes of rail transit and the ongoing fiasco of liberal Hawaii politics. HawaiiReporter recently added several new reporters to its roster including Greg Wiles and Jim Dooley, both veterans in Hawaii media.