Erie Times-News to Gut its Comics Pages
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The Erie Times-News plans on cutting 14-16 of its 36 comic strips and panels.
Our intent is to eliminate one of the two pages of comics we run each day, which means dropping 14 or perhaps 16 of the 36 comics we run Monday through Saturday. We are not making wholesale changes to our four-page, full-color Sunday comics section.
The Times-News has run two pages of comics daily since the merger of the Morning News and Erie Daily Times 19 years ago. Instead of making the choice then, our leadership at the time decided to continue publishing each of the comics pages that had run in those papers.
But the economics of newspapers have changed over the past 20 years, and comics aren’t cheap.
The editors offer other reasons, other than cost, for cutting some comics:
At least three comics — “Herman,” “For Better or For Worse” and “Get Fuzzy” — have been in reruns for some time. Others are on their second or third artist.
Peanuts is the only rerun strip not mentioned in their comment.
The readers are offered an editor selected list of 23 strips to vote for, the list includes the mentioned reruns and all their adventure/soap strips.
The closest I can get to a list of their 36 comics is from a December 2017 edition of the newspaper.
The features in bold are seemingly safe for now.
Beetle Bailey – – Mark Trail – – Pearls Before Swine – – Rex Morgan, M.D.
Blondie – – Mary Worth – – Lola – – The Buckets
Shoe – – Luann – – Mother Goose and Grimm – – The Grizzwells
B. C. – – Loose Parts – – Get Fuzzy – – Close To Home
Baby Blues – – Zits – – For Better or For Worse – – Peanuts
Frank and Ernest – – Arlo and Janis – – Soup To Nutz* – – Dilbert
Pajama Diaries – – WuMo – – Hi and Lois – – Big Nate
Garfield – – The Born Loser – – The Wizard of Id – – Lio
Herman – – Moderately Confused – – Mr. Boffo – – Pickles
*Soup to Nutz has since been discontinued, apparently replaced by Wallace the Brave.
The Erie Times-News article explaining it all is here.
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