By now, Advertiser readers know that we did not publish an edition Saturday, Dec. 27, because of an islandwide blackout that prevented our presses from getting started until late Saturday morning. It was an agonizing decision to make for a publication that had not missed production of a daily newspaper in 67 years.

But with power out at our downtown news building for 18 hours and at our Kapolei printing facility for about 11 hours, we could not print anything that would not be terribly outdated and so we placed our paper online in a series of PDFs that turned out to be a big hit with readers. Many asked if we could provide PDF versions of the entire newspaper every day and others praised our online updates throughout the night and into the morning.

"Advertiser staff, no need to apologize," wrote Michael Weston. "I think you folks did an outstanding job keeping us informed during the outage. For those of us with laptops and cellular cards, you and KGMB were the only two news organizations regularly updating their coverage."

Weston also asked for more PDF versions of the paper, even by paid subscription. "Could be an additional revenue source and environmentally friendly too!"

Another online reader wrote: "The Honolulu Advertiser did an awesome job during the whole event!! I was on their Web site all night gathering info as it came in. Thank you dear Advertiser employees and management. All of you deserve great praise and recognition for a job well done. Mahalo."

All night Friday and into Saturday, the newsroom moved to our loading ramp outside the news building and gas-fed generators powered our computers and laptops, similar to what happened during the October 2006 earthquake. Headlights from two automobiles kept the area well-lit while reporters and editors worked away.

"Using Clearwire and wireless data cards, our editors and reporters posted stories on our Web site while page designers put together an eight-page A section and a four-page B section in hopes we could publish once power was restored," said Sandee Oshiro, Digital Media director/content.

The power went out just as designers Christine Strobel, Matt Schick and Paul Kuromoto finished the news pages. Copy editors Jason Kasamoto and Celia Downes checked the stories, wrote headlines and prepared captions. The finished pages were converted to Adobe PDF format and burned on a CD disk, and we drove them out to the Kapolei plant.

But Kapolei lost power as we were en route and without a printing press, we posted the PDFs of the 12 pages on our Web site (www.honoluluadvertiser.com). Breaking-news text alerts went out to our mobile subscribers (register at www.honoluluadvertiser.com/mobile) with updates throughout the night. Headlines were also fed to our Twitter followers (@honadv).

The online staff, including Scott Morifuji, Scott Nishi, John Miyakado, Mark Milligan and John Garcia (working at home and using his car to power his computer) prepared the special online presentation of breaking news and PDF pages. Nishi also grabbed a video camera and produced a segment on people coping in the dark.

Reader comments filled the feedback section of our stories, some of which gave us news updates of conditions in neighborhoods around O'ahu. Readers also sent in photos, one of them by freelancer Phil Uhl that was spectacular enough to be featured on the home page of our Web site and on Page One of Sunday's newspaper.

Our Friday Web traffic — despite the electrical outage — was 624,028 page views and Saturday's total was 758,923, far higher than normal.

Under the direction of Managing Editor Marsha McFadden, reporters, editors and photographers, some of whom worked throughout Friday night and early Saturday, stayed on through the day, and we produced a solid Sunday paper with seven full pages of blackout coverage.

Our core team of reporters — Mary Vorsino, Rick Daysog, Peter Boylan, Gordon Pang and William Cole — worked Friday and Saturday, joined on the second day by Dan Nakaso, Rob Perez, Will Hoover and David Waite. Staff photographers Norm Shapiro, Rebecca Breyer, Andrew Shimabuku and Jeff Widener provided the photos.

We're still upset about missing the delivery of a print edition and will do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again. But we are thankful that readers like Kim Bedier realized that our electronic newspaper was immediate and informative.

"Yours was the first I found with any report, and your regular updates made us feel safe and informed," she wrote. "I am very impressed and thank your reporters, who obviously worked through the night."

Mark Platte is senior vice president and editor of The Advertiser. Reach him at 525-8080 or post your comments at www.honoluluadvertiser.com.