The Albany Herald (GA) has brought back a full page of comics after dropping the number of comics from 22 to 12. The editor, Jim Hendricks, told E&P that “making the change to reduce the number of comic strips we run on a daily basis was an economic decision, making the change to bring them all back is a readership decision.”
The paper received over 300 requests from readers to return some or all of the features.
“When that many readers take the time to call, write, or send an e-mail to tell you that you made a mistake by taking away something they truly want, the right thing to do is to own up to it and fix it.”
CORRECTION:The decision to reduce the number of comics was a STUPID decision.
Hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend!
If this is to become a trend, we need more readers to call and write insisting upon expanded comics pages.
Headline: “ALBANY HERALD DOUBLES ITS NUMBER OF COMICS”
Yeah. Good for them. Good for the readers who complained and good for the editors who listened.
Maybe their example will help insure that comics will be one of the last things to cut rather than one of the first.
Maybe the next time they feel the need to have a poll, perhaps they should pit all features against each other instead of comics vs. comics. Let’s have a readers poll on which features in general should stay or go, so to save money and create more space for what readers want most, they can cut, say, crossword puzzles instead of comics.
If they’re REALLY interested in what the readers want, or don’t want, then such polls should cut a wider swath of features instead of just focusing on just one. Then perhaps they will finally learn that it’s mostly the comics that’s holding what little readership they have left… and keeping them employed.
Now that, Wiley, is an inspired idea. Stock tables, TV listings, even weather … the info is so better presented and available on other media.
If what Wiley suggests were to happen, half the journalists in the country would be unemployed.
Good for the Baltimore Herald.
Meanwhile, the L.A. Times has a good daily selection of comics, but its Sunday offering is just pathetic. One of its pages is full of comics. the other is just filled with a lot of jun, kids’ stories and puzzles and such. There must be loads of real comics out there the Times could include if it wasn’t so cheap about filling its Sunday comics pages.
I meant the Albany Herald
I agree about the Sunday comics section in LA Times. The one at the rival LA Daily News is better, IMO.
Now that you chose to destroy the tv listings I’ll no longer buy your Sunday edition. Which , by the way was the only paper
i buy since i dropped your daily editions.
So, we’re a weekly paper that comes out on Thursday, and this guy is refusing to buy our Sunday edition because we destroyed the TV listings we never carried … or was he talking to Wiley?