Replacing The Pajama Diaries

D. D. Degg December 24, 2019 1 minute 5 comments

Newspapers are starting to tell readers what will replace The Pajama Diaries
when Terri Libenson retires the comic strip on January 4, 2020.

Terri’s home paper The Cleveland Plain Dealer, where we first learned of Terri’s plans, offered a comics poll a couple weeks ago. In the running there is Curtis, Macanudo, Six Chix, or the King Features strip of your choice.

The Erie Times-News didn’t have time to involve their readers in the decision:

Earlier this year, the Times-News asked for the community’s help in redesigning the comics pages and received around 3,500 responses. In this case, there wasn’t the same opportunity to involve readers. Libenson’s retirement was announced in early December, creating urgency in selecting a replacement so the advance production necessary to publish the daily comics pages and Sunday section could continue. And just two strips, including “Between Friends,” were made available as replacement options.

Between Friends by Sandra Bell-Lundy will begin there Sunday, January 5.

In Oklahoma the Lawton Constitution did ask the readers to opine:

Lawton Constitution readers chose the new comic strip by casting their ballots.

“King Syndicate informed us they were discontinuing “The Pajama Diaries” and offered us the opportunity to replace the strip,” said Managing Editor Dee Ann Patterson. “We decided to leave the decision up to our readers and they overwhelmingly chose ‘Dustin.’ We would like to thank all of our readers who took the time to vote.”

Dustin replaces The Pajama Diaries in Lawton where it apparently ran Sunday-only.

Comments ⁵

michael shonk

So King Features is not adding a new strip to replace Pajama Diaries but just offering what they currently run.

Mike Peterson

Editors having no idea how business actually works, it doesn’t occur to them that they can replace it with any strip from any syndicate, and KFS would simply stop billing them for the strip that it no longer delivers.

You wonder how they get their shoes on the right feet in the morning.

Brett Mount

It seems replacing a strip with a warm view of intergenerational relationships such as “The Pyjama Diaries” with “Dustin” is a little tone deaf.

I don;’t think there’s a lot of overlap in the readerships, unless you treat “people who read comic strips” as homogeneous.

D. D. Degg (admin)

I get the impression that the syndicate purposely delayed informing newspaper editors, leaving them only a couple weeks to make the decision; and here was the syndicate offering them strips to fill that quickly forthcoming void. ymmv

Eileen Halliwell

I will miss the on dairies.it was my favorite comic strip. Can’t they run the old on dairies?

Comments are closed.