After a year in the editor's chair, I can report some good news amid the gloom and doom that often accompanies stories about the newspaper industry.

The Honolulu Advertiser is a transformed organization, one that has taken the traditional print edition and launched it in many different ways into cyberspace. The staff has done an amazing job with all the new demands, and it is paying off in increased readership, particularly on our Web site.

Our community sites have more than tripled in page views to more than 90,000 since their start in January. In a few days, with the launch of our North Shore and Salt Lake sites, we'll have 20 sites and by July 15, our complement of 23 sites will be complete. Our Hawai'i Kai site is the most popular, followed by Kapolei, Kane'ohe and Kaimuki. With our seven sister People publications (with Central Honolulu and Honolulu just launched) we have O'ahu covered.

We have strengthened that community coverage with our mobile journalists, or "mojos," who are out of the office and file from remote locations. They have found stories we never would have discovered had we not been out roaming O'ahu for news. Under the direction of editor Dan Woods, the mojos continue to help make us the No. 1 local source of news. The third page of our Hawai'i section is a great showcase of what is happening on all the Islands.

Our breaking-news posts are as popular as ever and benefit from having Hawai'i's only 24/7 news operation, which we started in November. We know other news organizations monitor us for information, and we appreciate it when we get a mention citing us as the source for information. From January to May, our page views for breaking news alone have increased nearly 20 percent, from 1.965 million to 2.35 million.

Overall, our site gets close to 20 million page views a month, which is an all-time high. Our visitors are at 1.7 million. Readers spend an average of about 16 minutes on our site per visit.

Perhaps our biggest success, and one that surprised us the most, was the popularity of our videos. Multimedia editor Seth Jones has done a masterful job guiding our video production, and it paid off in April as our videos drew a record 185,473 page views. A combination of videos including interviews with Don Ho's children, singing Warrior football players and breaking news contributed to the extraordinary month, but the quality of the video is getting much better, and in May, we had 116,218 views. Since Jan. 12, when our staff finished video training, to May 31, we have produced about 350 videos.

Amid all this innovation, we launched www.HawaiiPreps.com and www.HawaiiMoms.com. Both have done remarkably well. HawaiiPreps.com attracted 90,700 page views in its first month of operation in April and jumped to 134,000 hits in May. It blended well with our preps page in sports six days a week. Look for a relaunch this fall when prep sports are back in season.

HawaiiMoms.com started on Mother's Day, May 13, and already we have 64,500 page views and more than 300 registered users. A very nice start.

Blogs also continue to be popular. Page views for our nine blogs hit 523,000 in May, our highest number. Stephen Tsai's "Warrior Beat" accounts for 56 percent of the total.

As for the newspaper, we are emphasizing even more local news in every section. The front-page centerpieces showcase information and graphics, as well as photos. We are providing more exclusive content and enterprise that reporters and editors are working hard to produce. Sometimes we'll even throw a surprise out there, looking at a sports or entertainment issue that needs to be analyzed.

Our high school sports and University of Hawai'i coverage is unparalleled. The information we provide on health and fitness, on fashion, on business issues as well as government, public safety and the military and many other subjects cannot be touched. We have done some fine public service coverage in the past year and will continue to make that a priority.

Readers always keep us honest about what they like and don't like, and I am aware of what they consider bias and slant in stories. Sometimes I agree and sometimes I do not, but please know your concerns and praise are always discussed in news meetings or one-on-one with the editors involved.

We are far from perfect, but we continue to improve and hopefully make you feel that we are an indispensable source of information. If we've fallen short of that goal or you have constructive suggestions for improvement, I'd like to hear from you.