While yesterday had a few Lee Enterprises newspapers announce changes to their comics and puzzles, today there was a flood of them informing their readers of the changes, many on their front pages. Most of them just printed the boiler-plate company-issued announcement, while some used that as the basis of their own wording.
But now it is confirmed that Lee Enterprises newspapers will be carrying King Features comics exclusively.
And King Features issued a statement heralding their coup of the 73 Lee Enterprises newspapers:
NEW YORK, September 13, 2024 – King Features Syndicate, a unit of Hearst and home to some of the world’s most popular entertainment characters, has entered into a multi-year syndication agreement [emphasis added] with Lee Enterprises, a leading provider of high quality, trusted, local news and information. The partnership brings King Features’ award-winning comics, features, puzzles, and games to regional newspapers and their digital platforms across Lee’s 73 markets.
Under this deal, readers across the country will enjoy beloved King Features comic strips and columns, in addition to its offering of world-famous crossword puzzles and games. This collaboration emphasizes digital content distribution as a strategic component, furthering Lee Enterprises’ ongoing digital transformation, which now sees 50% of its revenue sourced from digital channels. The addition of King Features’ robust offerings aims to drive further innovation, growth and enhanced digital content engagement with subscribers.
Still some questions remain.
None of the reports gave a rundown of what exactly the comics pages will consist of, but Anne Morse Hambrock reported that her local Lee paper daily comics page now consists of Zits, Beetle Bailey, Hagar, Snuffy Smith, Hi and Lois, Sally Forth, Macanudo, Break of Day and Family Circus (and add Blondie to make it ten). Will this be the line-up for all 73 newspapers? Of will editors have a choice of various King comics that would differ from the Kenosha News offerings? And what of the Sunday Funnies? Various reports, including that Arizona Daily Star screenshot above, have Dennis the Menace and Carpe Diem in the Sunday comics supplement. What will be the make-up of that and will it be consistent company-wide?
The King Features press release trumpets that the agreements includes puzzles and columns, but what about King’s editorial cartoons? Will Lee newspapers, who still have a couple of staff cartoonists (Phil Hands at The Wisconsin State Journal and Adam Zyglis at The Buffalo News), be tied to the King Features ed-op cartoonists?
September 15 Update:
Paul Berge tells us (see comments below) that the editorial cartoon in The Racine Journal Times is by Michael Ramirez which would be from Creators Syndicate.
It will be a month before the newspapers.com database catches up to this news with the comics pages, and the full contents of Lee papers online are behind a paywall, so reports from our readers would be appreciated.
More From King and Lee:
“Lee Enterprises has been one of the country’s most trusted sources of local news for decades and we are thrilled to partner with them to bring King Features’ incredible selection of puzzles, games, features and comic strips, including many longtime fan-favorites and new series that are quickly building fanbases, back to Lee newspapers to enjoy.” said Roland Hamilton, Senior Vice President, King Features. “As digital becomes an increasingly important component for news providers, comics and games offer an opportunity to bring increased value to subscribers that can drive growth and retention.”
“We’re thrilled to partner with King Features on what’s truly an outstanding lineup of comics, puzzles, games and other features from some of the world’s best creators,” said Jason Adrians, Vice President-Local News for Lee Enterprises. “We’re excited that our subscribers get to experience this incredibly robust selection of some of the most innovative and captivating features content available today.”
September 15 Update
Thanks to Anne Morse Hambrock and Paul Berge we have the likely new comics lineup for all Lee newspapers.
The Lee enterprises new Sunday Comics section runs with Family Circus, Blondie, Zits, Beetle Bailey, Between Friends, Dennis the Menace, Mutts, and Hägar the Horrible. These comics are running in both The Kenosha News and The Racine Journal Times, and both are Wisconsin newspapers.
Interestingly the Tribune News distributed KidNews page is running so they are taking features from syndicates other King Features; it’ll be a nice boost for Mark Marderosian’s The Magical Attic. Anne reports that the back page of the four page section is “Wisconsin Memories local interest history” so we will have to wait and see if page four is given over to local editors nationwide, and if some add more comics.
Update September 16:
We now have a four page comics section of the new Lee Sunday Funnies.
Back to the unfunnny days of the 1980s I guess. Terrible selection of comics I assumed had been put out to pasture.
Someone should do a net petition to Lee Enterprises to bring back some Andrews-McMeel comics for a secondary comics page or something like that!
A plan B would be to write to Lee Enterprises which is headquartered in Iowa to get the Andrews-McMeel comics lineup back and suggest all 73 Lee owned papers to use the KFS lineup, the A-M lineup, or both daily and/or Sunday.
I just wrote to Lee Enterprises with my plan A and B to reinstate the Andrews-McMeel comics page previously used by 73 Lee owned papers either for them to choose to compliment with the King Features lineup or drop the KFS lineup and replace with the A-M strips if the paper chooses.
Here’s the Racine-Kenosha New-Journal-Times Sunday comics: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eagleburp/shares/6773a5aNY5
I couldn’t fully make out if there were any comics on the back page or if it was an ad. Either way, it looks like the most depressing Sunday comic section I’ve ever seen.
Rodrigo – Anne Morse Hambrock has reported that the back page in Kenosha is made up of a Wisconsin history page. We hope to get reports from elsewhere in the country to bolster the overall results of the change.
Today’s editorial cartoon was Michael Ramirez’s September 8 cartoon.
And the travel feature story “Wisconsin Memories” on the back page of the comics section comes from Tribune News Service. (Byline Patti Nickell).
I emailed the publisher of our local paper to complain about the loss of Baby Blues, Pickles, For Better or Worse and Doonesbury. His reply: “I’m sorry about the comics. The change was made company wide as a way to preserve resources for local news reporting.”