With electricity knocked out, residents had their choice of tuning in to something old or something new to get the latest information: the radio and the Internet.

As has been the case over the past few decades, many residents turned their battery-operated radios to KSSK to learn what stores were still open, who to call if they needed assistance, or just to hear the simple reminder to treat intersections as four-way stops.

Meanwhile, major print and television outlets that traditionally rely on electricity to produce a newspaper or broadcast turned to Web capabilities.

KSSK, one of two designated O'ahu emergency broadcasters, went to emergency generators and almost immediately began nonstop coverage, at about 6:30 p.m. Mike Buck, who hosts a talk show on sister Clear Channel Hawaii station KHVH, walked across the hall to lend a hand to KSSK assistant program director Steve Storm and began fielding phone calls.

Radio hosts Michael W. Perry and Larry Price, news director Julia Norton Dennis, radio personality Kathy With a K and other key players were in the Dole Cannery studios within an hour of the first outage and stayed until about 11 p.m.

Hawaiian Electric Co. spokesman Peter Rosegg showed up before Perry and Price did and stayed until the duo left for the evening. Gov. Linda Lingle, Mayor Mufi Hannemann, and representatives from all major state and city agencies also called in.

At about 8 p.m., the KSSK-FM signal went out. It was up to Clear Channel chief engineer Dale Machado to make his way in the dark from his Kane'ohe home to the KSSK generator site at Makakilo's Palehua Ridge to figure out what happened.

"It turned out to be a circuit breaker on our generator tripped," Machado said. "It was simple but you physically had to be there to fix it."

Rosegg returned to join Perry and Price for their regular Saturday morning shift at 6 a.m.

"Larry and I just sort of know what to do," Perry said, adding that they appreciate the large number of O'ahu residents who turn to the "masters of disaster" in times of crisis. "It's not a burden at all. My gosh, it's the best possible use for your radio and our electrons."

At the two ends of South Street, the biggest challenge for staffers of The Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin was getting a print edition out for yesterday.

At The Advertiser, resources were thrown into ensuring the Web site kept up to date with the latest.

The paper's Kapolei printing plant lost power at about 8:30 p.m., and did not get it back until 4 a.m. yesterday.

"Our printing plant is so intricate that even though power returned, it took four or five hours to synchronize the system, replace burned-out sensors and make calls to our German manufacturer," said Advertiser Editor Mark Platte. "By that time, we concluded that it didn't make sense to put out a limited-run newspaper and instead to concentrate on the Sunday edition."

It was the first time since Dec. 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor and other parts of O'ahu were bombed, that no print edition of The Advertiser was published.

The online edition of the newspaper, however, included files of the Saturday edition pages (including the front page, pictured at right) "just the way they would have looked in print," Platte said.

Readers with access to the Web received a steady stream of online posts nonstop from the time of the outage.

"Those updates were generated on laptops fueled by a gas-powered generator," Platte said. "Reporters and editors typed their stories into the system just outside our parking lot with car headlights helping them to see."

Platte said: "In times of emergency, people are more likely to go online to get immediate information rather than wait for a print edition that is many hours old."

At the Star-Bulletin, late in the evening, a decision was made to keep a skeleton crew at work on the Web site through the early morning and then return a larger crew to put out a later-than-usual Saturday edition.

"The idea was we wanted to do something (in print) but obviously it would be really challenging," said Editor Frank Bridgewater. "But we felt the need to publish something."

By 6 a.m., power had been restored to both the Star-Bulletin newsroom at Restaurant Row and the paper's Kane'ohe printing press, he said.

A 16-page edition, including news from all four sections, went to press by late morning and was delivered to subscribers between Pearl City and East Honolulu, and Windward O'ahu, a majority of Star-Bulletin subscribers, Bridgewater said.

With the help of generators, all four television stations broadcast 10 p.m. newscasts Friday night and hit hard with newscasts last night.

KGMB and KITV appeared to take heavier advantage of the Internet to get both print and video stories out.

Christi Young, KGMB news executive producer, said many of the station's video stories were simulcast on its Web site. "There are different venues where people can get news these days," Young said.

Tod Pritchard, KITV news director, said the shifting of resources to provide more information online is part of a fundamental change going on in the news industry.