Editors Lack Guts to Choose New Comic Strips
An editor will get a wild hair and decide to drop comic strips when the creator is dead, (Peanuts, The Elderberries, B.C.) or the creator quits, or the editor thinks changes should be made for the good of the newspaper.
So a bunch of newsroom types gather a bunch of comic strips and look at them. Newsrooms are such a good focus group for comic strips! The potential strips are winnowed to a few.
Then the editor abdicates total responsibility and lets the readers vote on which they like.
Minneapolis is going through this now.
It’s a cop out. Editors read day in an day out how they need to be more responsive to readers. When it’s time to change comics they trot out the “need to be more responsive to readers” mantra, and put things up for a vote.
Editors think that readers care about the newspaper’s position on presidential candidates, and a myriad of other topics and stories, so they reserve the right to decide what gets published.
Editors know deep down, that they will get more blow-back from readers on changing a comic strip than they will from most front page stories.
January 17th, 2008 at 8:21 am
[...] Newspaper Business Blog is talking about a Minneapolis newspaper that is opening up to readers to vote on which comics stay [...]
January 18th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
[...] UPDATE: Winston-Salem, NC, editors strike a blow for “reader involvement.” They choose Pearls Before Swine comic. More than 270 people wrote in about the comic, with about 70% of them giving it favorable comments. [...]
April 28th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
[...] editors are made of, and as per the requirement taught by all the best J-schools, the editor will let the readers decide by vote. The comics being tested include “Baby Blues,” “Bizarro,” “Mother [...]