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Hard times for the comics page
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The tough conditions facing our economy have begun to spill over to the funny pages of our newspapers.
Case in point? The Florida TImes-Union, in a web feature it calls "Comic Strip Survivor," says it will cut 8 of the comics it currently offers, citing "financial realities" (Readers can vote for what ought to stay). Will they dump "Dilbert"? "Get Fuzzy"? My God, it's positively spine tingling.
Hey, it's not exactly a surprise that newspapers have been looking to cut costs as ad dollars flee to the web and other venues and circulation, for the most part, erodes further every six months. But frankly, the comics are the only reason I pick up some newspapers when I travel, and certainly the only reason I continue to read the increasingly dreary New York Daily News (which, by the way, has dropped an entire page worth of comics in recent years.)
These difficult times are making lots of industries look at what they do and how they do it. And I suspect there's a case to be made for no longer carrying "repeat" comics by departed cartoonists such as Charles Schulz, or "rerun" strips by artists who just want to keep their strips going, like Lynn Johnston's once-masterful "For Better or For Worse." Likewise, there's more pressure on editors to keep the page vibrant, which means phone-it-in efforts like"Shoe," "Garfield" and "Cathy" could certainly get the broom.
In some cases, this could be a rewarding development. As noted elsewhere on this blog, I've noticed new life in "Blondie," which is absorbing modern culture faster than it ever has before. And I suspect new cartoons might get more than a passing glance from an comics editor looking to attract the eye of a younger reader.
An interesting side note that only serves to show just how behind the times and out of sync newspapers are. Readers of the Times Union were told to cast their votes for their favorite comics online. But as this page shows, many of them have been unable to do so because of technical glitches. Not the most savvy use of the web -and it just makes the Jacksonville newspaper seem that much more crinkly with age.
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