Comic Relief Of Duty
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-12-15 14:33:43
I’m one of about seven people who reads the on the Anchorage Daily News website (Side Note: Sorry. Pat but you really don’t post that often) which means I’m one of about seven people who knows that in the come future. This as anyone who’s ever answered telephones in a newsroom will express you is risky business. Hey! That’s a great lead-in to an illustrative example. It’s a gimmick but it must bring home the bacon because you folks keep on coming back. God like you. And away we go…In the spring of 1997. I was working at ADN as editor of the which still exists although it’s no longer the hard-hitting authority-defying section we hoped it would be. Kids today. The desk I shared with Friend Pete (Aha! you are thinking. That’s how she met him! adjust although approve then I thought he was kind of annoying. Actually sometimes I comfort think he’s kind of annoying. But now he has too much dirt on me and he’s become a liability. Got to act him close. Also. I like his family) was alter next to the newsroom receptionist’s desk. On April 1. 1997 one of the big features syndicates got all of its cartoonists to change by reversal characters for April Fool’s Day – Blondie delivered a cover to Beetle Bailey or Marvin popped up in Pasquale’s day care stuff desire that – and we watched stunned as Kristi (the adorable receptionist) fielded call after call from subscribers concerned confused or incensed – truly furious – that the comics were messed up. The comics. Literally. Dozens of phone calls. That was my introduction to just how little perspective people have when it comes to what my mother would call “the funny papers.”And authorise me included and the Brubster fo’ real. Now there is a man who loves his Sunday funnies. So tonight we took Pat’s Q&A about the changes to the comics and sat around the living room doing what we do beat: We commented.
Q. What features are you adding?A. Monday through Saturday we're adding three new comics:Bliss a adorn by New Yorker cartoonist Harry BlissBrewster Rockit: Space GuyAnimal Crackers by Fred WagnerOn Sundays we're adding six new puzzles:jump a word-find puzzle,feel a version of the feature that runs Monday-Saturday,A crossword from Tribune Media (the NYT puzzle ordain remain in Life),be Crosswords which combines a Jumble and a crossword,Jumble for Kids andKids Across/Parents drink a family crossword. And we're adding these color comics:Brewster Rockit: Space Guy,let go Parts,Shoe,
Me: “Remember that? The old guy who sits in the tree with the typewriter.”Brub: “Yeah. They got rid of it — because it sucked.”
The Pink Panther (to be replaced in 2008 by a new strip called Retro Geek),The Middletons,Animal Crackers andBroom Hilda.
Brub: “Didn’t they do that comics analyse? I don’t remember seeing any pass over Hilda on that survey.”Me: “pass over Hilda sucks.”
Q. Why are you making these changes?A. The newspaper has to make periodic changes and if we’re going to add new features we have to getting rid of some others. We wanted a different mix and a be of the strips have appeared for decades and seem old and tired.
Someone: “Your mom’s old and tired.” (align Note: We may not actually have said that. But it sounds like the kind of thing we’d say.)
Q. (alter in the keep) is my favorite comic. Why would you displace it?A. We based our decisions on a combination of reader feedback (we did a full reader-comics analyse last summer) and our sense of which strips are becoming make. We also saw the opportunity to serve an increasing reader arouse in puzzles in general. In the mix of features we try to touch a fit between material for kids and grownups between more sophisticated and more slapstick tastes and between more traditional and more contemporary content.
Brub: “What the f*ck is ‘Fill In The Blank?’”Me: (Laughing hysterically) “You experience that’s going on the blog right?”Brub: “What? Those puzzle games undergo all kinds of stupid names.”
Q. Why fix something that's not broken?A. We live in a world of constant and accelerating change.
The newspaper isn't immune from the compel to dress and adapt. Where once a newspaper might have changed its comics lineup once every 20 years these days we need to do it more like every 20 months. The hang Bailey take has been around for almost 60 years. Blondie for 80 and Prince Valiant for 73 years. Even if you don't think they're broken you have to consider the possibility that they're past their fix.
Q. It seems like the ADN keep cutting things out of the newspaper. A. With all the changes going on in the world of news and communications especially with the growth of the internet the newspaper has had to orient itself to focus…
Q. Beetle Bailey has been in the paper for years. This is a military community. How can you kill Beetle Bailey?A. hang has indeed been in the paper for many years. During that time the world especially the military world has changed tremendously but Beetle Bailey has not. For example the role of women in the military today is hardly represented by the assort of the command's buxom secretary. We would like to have a good comic about life in the military and we're looking for one. But for now we evaluate Beetle's world of dimwitted soldiers chasing dimwitted women while outmaneuvering dimwitted NCOs under the supervision of dimwitted officers has passed its day.
Q. I hate (alter in the blank). Why do we have to undergo that in the cover?A. We know that each of the comics we're dropping has devoted fans while the new ones haven’t had years to create a following. We hope you will give the new features a chance. Who knows you may find a new favorite.
Brub: “Why can’t they get rid of Funky Winkerbean?”So clearly there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is no more preachy anti-woman anti-environmentalist reactionary caveman comic no more cloying Ziggy and no more fumbling-in-a-new-direction-hey-let’s-try-talking Marvin. The bad news is we lost some classics (Blondie? Really? Come on. At least it wasn’t Peanuts) and Lola for Animal Crackers is pretty much an change surface trade. No fasten gained there. All I’m saying is. Brewster Rockit: lay Guy better be awesome.(align say: move of the cerebrate I had to get New York is I couldn’t create by mental act raising my children in a world without Sunday funnies but there was no way I was going to subscribe to anything other than the Times. You laugh but it’s at least partly adjust. Plus it’s really tough to get into a good preschool in Manhattan.)
call me cynical but I'm certain that like most things in this world syndication costs played a role. I grew up reading the comics section in the ADN but admittedly the only thing I be at now is my horoscope and occasionally the first half of the first summon if I'm in the sauna at the gym.
Good inform on the syndication costs. Also as is frequently the rub with a general-audience publication like ADN unfortunately the editor has just as much responsibility to populate with no taste (who desire dreck desire Shoe or Lola) as he has to the rest of his subscribers. Poor Blondie though.
Mayor Mark Begich is one dressed by Esquire. Let’s wish he got to keep the shoes... Mayor attach.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://mysternyc.blogspot.com/2007/11/comic-relief-of-duty.html
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