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Why are they messing with my funny pages?

Published Thursday, July 22, 2004 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

A guy who produces the Sunday funnies (read: comics section) for 38 newspapers across the U.S. says the plan to pull Doonesbury from the comics package "was not a political statement." Um, me no think so. Anyone working in the newspaper bidness knows that the comics pages always generate tremendous interest and criticism, no matter which comic strip you mention. I remember working at one newspaper where the editor delayed replacing strips for months after personally involving himself in that paper's comics survey. For every person who hates Family Circus, there is another person who loves it. So how do you decide which strips to run? Short answer: It's always political. And someone tells you differently, then that person is dodging. But a better question is, why would a newspaper want to buy a generic comics package anyhow? Oh, yes, that's right -- they'd do so to avoid having to make the same political decisions that the guy from Continental Features is trying to make regarding Doonesbury.
Full disclosure: I handpicked Garry Trudeau to be the baccalaureate speaker for my class of 1993 at Princeton. Nice guy. Great speaker. Met him again in Aspen two years ago for the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival and found him to be just as nice and great. Trudeau was honored then as part of the festival's "freedom of speech" theme. He is still doing his part. What about you?