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The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, is the second largest daily newspaper in the state of Hawaiʻi (the largest being the Honolulu Advertiser.) The Honolulu Star-Bulletin is owned by Black Press of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is administered by a council of local Hawaiʻi investors.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin published the first Extra Edition after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin was founded in 1882 by J. W. Robertson and Company as the Evening Bulletin, publishing its first edition on February 1 of that year. In 1912 it merged with the Hawaiian Star to become the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Wallace Rider Farrington, who later became Governor of Hawaiʻi, was the editor of the newspaper from 1898 and the president and publisher from 1912 until his death. His son Joseph Rider Farrington succeeded him and served as president and publisher until his own death in 1954. From 1962 it was owned by a local group of investors led by Elizabeth P. Farrington and operated under a joint operating agreement with the Honolulu Advertiser that allowed the two papers to use the same printing facilities and sales personnel (the Hawaii Newspaper Agency) while maintaining separate fully competitive editorial staffs and providing Honolulu with two distinct editorial "voices."

Gannett Pacific Corporation, a subsidiary of Gannett Corporation and currently the owner of the Honolulu Advertiser, purchased the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1971 under the terms of the existing joint operating agreement. The terms of the joint operating agreement did not allow one company to own both newspapers, so in 1993, Gannett sold the Honolulu Star-Bulletin to Liberty Newspapers so that it could purchase the Honolulu Advertiser. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin's circulation was allowed to decline thereafter and staffing reduced.

In September, 1999, Liberty Newspapers announced that it planned to close the Honolulu Star-Bulletin the following month. The decision was met with fierce resistance in the community and lawsuits were filed against Liberty and Gannett by the state and by concerned citizens' groups. The shutdown was postponed with an injunction by a federal district judge two weeks before the scheduled date of closure.

In April 2000, Liberty Newspapers offered the Honolulu Star-Bulletin for sale. The action once again threatened the closure of the publication, but in November of that year, Canadian publishing magnate David Black announced his intent to purchase the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. When the purchase was finalized in 2001, the joint operating agreement came to an end and Black moved the paper's administration and editorial offices to new headquarters in Restaurant Row near Honolulu Harbor. The newspaper is printed in Kaneohe, on the presses of the Star-Bulletin's sister publication, MidWeek. (Black had purchased MidWeek shortly before the Star-Bulletin deal was closed -- and at a time when no one in the local business community was aware that it was for sale.) The newspaper received a major facelift, the staff was expanded, and its readership once again grew.

Entertainment columnist Tim Ryan was fired on January 14, 2006 for plagiarising a number of stories during his time at the Star-Bulletin. In a statement on the paper's official website, editor Frank Bridgewater said, "The stories contained phrases or sentences that appeared elsewhere before being included, un-attributed, in stories that ran in the Star-Bulletin. The stories did not include inaccurate information or any fabrications." (full statement) Similarities between Ryan's December 22 review of the History Channel documentary "Secrets of the Black Box: Aloha Flight 243" were first noted on the Wikipedia Signpost [1]. Although Bridgewater did not reference Wikipedia in his official statement, the article itself was corrected by the Star-Bulletin on December 24th. The correction reads:

"A portion of a review of the television show Secrets of the Black Box: Aloha Flight 243 was taken verbatim from the Web site reference.com. The material was originally published in the online encyclopedia wikipedia.com. [sic – the URL is wikipedia.org] The article, on Page D6 Thursday, failed to attribute the information to either source." [2]

• Official website