On March 1 we noted that the McClatchy group of newspapers had standardized their daily comics pages (see below). Today, with the help of Jimmy Delach, we can report that the Sunday McClatchy newspaper Funnies are also uniform across the nation.
Jimmy sent me a copy of the Bradenton (Florida) Herald comics section of March 7, 2021:
On the other side of the country a duplicate section appeared in the Modesto (California) Bee. Well. exact but for the name of the newspaper and The Bee didn’t have that mysterious, and ominous, “paid advertising supplement” slug at the top of every page. So though we haven’t checked every McClatchy paper two McClatchy newspapers 2500 miles apart debuting the same Sunday color comics section on the same day makes it seem reasonable to assume the entire group is identical.
The Sunday roster for McClatchy now is:
Dilbert
Jumpstart
Doonesbury
Bizarro
Peanuts
Baby Blues
Wallace the Brave
Pickles
Pearls Before Swine
The Family Circus
Garfield
Rubes
Zits
The Flying McCoys
The Argyle Sweater
Barney and Clyde
Diamond Lil
Bound and Gagged
The Middletons
Close to Home
Tundra
Cornered
Mike Du Jour
Reality Check
Speed Bump
Candorville
B.C.
Mt. Pleasant
Wizard of Id
29 comics on 4 pages.
1st thought: This gives Mt. Pleasant, the new comic strip for 2021, a nice circulation boost.
Original post from March 1, 2021:
It seems the McClatchy Group of newspapers now has one comics page for all its newspapers.
From The Olympian in Washington state:
The Olympian is refreshing its comics and puzzles offerings beginning Monday.
If you are a longtime subscriber, you know that we periodically update these features. We know that readers have their favorites and that the change could be disruptive for some. But after working with the syndicates that produce the comics, we have put together an updated package that includes many of the most popular offerings and introduces several new ones.
That was yesterday’s online notice; today it was a front page notice.
Not just in Olympia…
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Raleigh News & Observer, The Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, and so it went. Front page news in 30 newspapers.
The Sacramento Bee’s notice varied slightly, mentioning Candorville.
The touted new eEdition comics page is available here (maybe? I registered). The page has six dozen comics from four syndicates. Notably only one continuity strip is there – the newly revised Mark Trail.
As for the print page? Here’s the daily lineup from today’s Modesto Bee:
The Family Circus
The Argyle Sweater
Rubes
Garfield
Wallace the Brave
Bound & Gagged
Diamond Lil
Wizard of Id
Pearls Before Swine
Dilbert
Peanuts
Baby Blues
Zits
Pickles
Tundra
Close to Home
Bizarro
The Flying McCoys
The print comics are spread among five syndicates, plus the self-syndicated Tundra. That came as a surprise – I had expected the new comics page to be exclusive to one syndicate or another. Also it strikes me that this is probably a nice circulation and income boost to a few of those comics.
Unknown if all the McClatchy Sunday Funnies will be as uniform.
By the way, the puzzle page is a mixture from Tribune Content Agency (including Jumble)
and Andrews McMeel Syndicate.
Below are samples of The Olympian and The Miami Herald daily comics from a month ago.
Hat tip to the Newseum for front page shots of the various notices.
Do you know how many papers were affected and which strips were dropped? I have read that Clay Jones and Breaking Cat News were dropped. Not sure what others. Seems like it would be a significant income loss.
The McClatchy site lists 29 newspapers across the nation.
https://www.mcclatchy.com/our-impact/markets
As far as I know each paper’s comics page, until this adjustment, was different – the editors of the various newspapers choosing which strips they would run in their paper. So I’m sure at least some were running Breaking Cat News.
McClatchy has three staff editorial cartoonists: Jack Ohman at The Sacramento Bee, Joel Pett at The Lexington Herald Leader, and Kevin Siers at The Charlotte Observer. The California papers usually run Ohman’s toons. The March 1 and March 7 Modesto Bee’s also carried editorial cartoons from the Washington Post Writers Group. I do not know if freelancer Clay Jones is (or was)
a regular at any of the papers. In another post Clay mentioned that the Gannett Group was shunning his toons.
As far as the Miami Herald goes, they had to drop “Blondie” (Sunday), “Breaking Cat News” (daily), “Cornered” (daily), “Cul De Sac” (Sunday), “Dennis The Menace” (Sunday), “Doonesbury” (daily), “Fox Trot” (Sunday), “Get Fuzzy” (Sunday), “Jump Start” (daily), “Luann” (Sunday), “Marmaduke” (Sunday), “Pooch Cafe”, “Rhymes With Orange” (Sunday), “Rose Is Rose” (Sunday), “WuMo” (Sunday)
For the Bradenton Herald, they dropped “Beetle Bailey”, “Blondie”, “The Born Loser” (Sunday), “Curtis”, “Dennis The Menace”, “Dustin”, “For Better Or For Worse”, “Get Fuzzy” (Sunday), “Hi & Lois”, “Marvin”, “Mother Goose & Grimm”, “Prince Valiant” (Sunday), “Shoe”, “Six Chix” (Sunday)
That’s the McClatchy papers in Florida.
How disappointing.
Glad Get Fuzzy is out of the McClatchy owned newspapers finally!