Oooh, there's a harsh opinion in "GONE TODAY, HERE TOMORROW," By TOM MARQUARDT, Publisher & Executive Editor, The Annapolis Capital Published September 07, 2008. Usually I just send you to the article, but I can't resist this quote:
"I guess Ms. Johnston's entrepreneurial attempt to ease herself into retirement without a loss of income - by interspersing a few new strips with old material - doesn't bother readers as much as it bothers editors asked to pay full price for the comic-page equivalent of reruns."
"How about rerunning sports results and County Council stories? Can't we all just get a grip and move on to another strip that has fresh story lines? Geesh, you guys are killing me."
Now, that's an editor.
You know, I read the guy's entire column and he has a lot of really good points. And yeah, he's harsh, but a good editor should be. I've pushed every paper I've worked out to drop the television grid as it is such a waste of newsprint and it can be found easily in so many places.
ReplyDeleteAnd if the FBFW strip is going to have a lot of reprints, then it should be price adjusted. Absolutely right.
I think the funniest part of the whole column, however, is about the bridge players. He gave into them and put the bridge column back, but he totally ripped them which is so awesome. I'm wondering if this column was only printed online where the majority of elderly bridge players wouldn't see it.
I've encountered a lot of funny reactions from elderly readers when we shrunk the size of the crossword puzzle answers, dropped certain comic strips and dropped a trivia quiz. It is shocking how fast newspapers are willing to give into what amounts to an extremely small number of complaints as compared to the entire readership. Something like 10 complaint letters to a paper with a daily print run of 250,000 papers can force a change. It's really insane.