Beaumont Enterprise Adds Nancy, Cuts Five Others
Skip to commentsThe Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise has signed Nancy as their new comic strip.
A few days ago the paper introduced the strip to its readers:
It’s been nearly two years — April 9, 2018 — since the comic strip created by Ernie Bushmiller got a reboot courtesy of a web cartoonist who goes by the pseudonym Olivia Jaimes. (Jaimes is famously private and declined an interview for this story.) Since her takeover of the strip, Jaimes has drawn widespread praise for her making the comic strip relevant to an audience that consumes most of its entertainment online.
The Nancy addition is part of The Enterprise’s reorganization of syndicated features.
The newspaper, in turn, relies on you — our readers, our subscribers and our advertisers — to support this and the other critical work we do every day. Given the challenging economics of our industry, your patronage matters more than ever.
Let’s keep this in mind as I lay out some changes that take effect today. They include the addition of a new cartoon strip and the expansion of two daily columns but also the discontinuation of some longstanding features.
These moves follow months of deliberations about which print features make the most sense in a world where so much content is available to readers digitally.
But please know that, as the steward of newsroom resources, I was guided above all by an absolute priority to ensure The Enterprise remains adequately staffed with tenacious, fair and tough-minded journalists.
As the newspaper explains above, the changes are for The Greater Good.
First, I’m excited to direct you to our comics page for the debut of “Nancy,” a vintage cartoon strip that has been updated for contemporary audiences by an adoring new artist. The spiky-haired girl has a cell phone and a blog now, but her attitude is as timelessly mischievous as ever. And, yes, Sluggo remains her faithful sidekick.
With that said, the editor gets to the bad news:
Now for the not-so-exciting news. We are eliminating the following daily strips: “Carpe Diem,” “Hagar The Horrible,” “Hi & Lois,” “Judge Parker” and “Rex Morgan, M.D.” In their place, the “7 Little Words,” “Sudoku” and “Jumble” puzzles will now appear at the bottom of the comics page Monday through Saturday.
All Sunday comics will remain as they are, with no changes.
Their daily line-up, taken from the September survey, now:
Dilbert
Hi & Lois
B.C.
Rex Morgan M.D.
Pearls Before Swine
Garfield
Judge Parker
Hagar the Horrible
Mutts
Curtis
Beetle Bailey
Marvin
Sally Forth
Baby Blues
Blondie
Snuffy Smith
Zits
Carpe Diem
Dustin
Bizarro
Argyle Sweater
Marmaduke
Nancy is an Andrews McMeel Syndication strip, while the five dropped comics are all King Features Syndicate. Even so the Beaumont Enterprise comics page remains two-thirds KFS over AMS.
Rolf Rykken
Rob Morris