Mike Rhode has blogged out todays announcement from the Washington Post that they are dropping a full comic section from their Sunday comics. The Post states that they will only be dropping two features (Wizard of Id and Hints from Heloise) and that all other comics will be squeezed into one section. Here’s their announcement:
The Sunday comics will look a little different beginning next week. A new page design will allow us to combine the two comics sections into one convenient section with nearly all of our extensive offering of comics, puzzles and features.
To accommodate the more compact layout, “The Wizard of Id” strip and the “Hints From Heloise” column will no longer appear in the comics section, and the size of several of our larger comics as well as the Samurai Sudoku puzzle will be slightly reduced. Heloise can still be found in the Tuesday Style section, and “The Wizard of Id” appears on washingtonpost.com daily, including Sunday.
No reason, other than ‘convenience’ was cited for this move.
Someday newspaper comics will fit on a microchip.
Does this redesign include a 1/2 page reserved for “Opus” (as the strip originally required) or will that be squeezed in too?
We’ll have to see next week when the new redesign rolls out.
The problem is the pictures. Pictures take up too much space. Maybe if they just ran the dialog, that would save space. But that would look pretty bland. What if they hired actors to read the dialog, then filmed the actors? They could build sets and play music in the background. I’ll bet that would increase newspaper circulation.
“A new page design will allow us to combine the two comics sections into one convenient section with nearly all of our extensive offering of comics, puzzles and features.”
So, making the comics harder to read by squeezing them down is convenient to whom? Why don’t they just come out and say, “Hey, we’re hurting for money and this’ll save us a few bucks.”