Because we are inundated with celebrity news all around us, it's tempting to think that the death of entertainer Michael Jackson on June 25 should have been relegated to the inside pages of the newspaper.

But all of us at The Advertiser knew that Jackson, regardless of whether he made your heart leap or skin crawl, was a larger-than-life figure in the music world and deserved substantial coverage.

Some editors mentioned this particular event ranking in news value with the death of Princess Diana in 1997 at age 36 or John Lennon in 1980 at age 40, but what made both of those stories more newsworthy was the horrific way in which they died.

Jackson, as far as we know, suffered a heart attack which may or may not have been brought upon by a drug overdose. In that way, this story is more on a par with the death of Elvis Presley in 1977 at age 42.

Complicating matters for story play were all the controversial chapters of Jackson's life, from his criminal trial on child molestation charges (he was acquitted) to his bizarre behavior in holding his infant (named Blanket) over a hotel balcony in Berlin.

It was obvious to us that the Jackson story would take up a major portion of Page One, but how large of a presence and how much space inside the newspaper should be set aside was a question that took most of the day to resolve.

Meanwhile, we had already produced a breaking news special online when we learned Jackson had died, which needed continual updating as conflicting news reports poured in.

The biggest disagreement among editors was whether to devote one or two full pages of coverage inside the paper and whether the Jackson story should be the lead story or simply a centerpiece on the front page.

No other story — local, national or international — dominated the news on that day the way Jackson's death, and the world's reaction to it, did. Our best local contenders — Matson continuing talks with its unions and new tourism numbers — couldn't come close.

Still, there were those who believed that Jackson's career was on a long decline and that his death, given his strange and erratic behavior, was sadly inevitable. In short, did anyone really care about the singer anymore when he had ceased to be musically relevant?

We concluded that his death deserved significant treatment and that two pages inside the paper was adequate, with an overview of his life and death, a local story about his impact in Hawai'i, a national reaction, a chronology of his history and a story about how quickly the news about his death spread through the Internet.

Our final debate centered on the main headline. We wanted something forward looking and settled on "Fans mourn King of Pop" but even then, a few editors wanted "King of Pop" in quotes since it was a title reportedly bestowed on him by Elizabeth Taylor. But given the tens of millions of records he has sold, the hundreds of concerts he has sold out, the influence he had on scores of musicians that came after him, we thought we'd lose the quotes.