Gannett newspaper The Tallahassee Democrat was forced by Corporate to realign its comics page. The result of cutting Pickles, since the majority of newspaper subscribers are the among the elder generations, was predictable.
“My heart hurt so much when I read about the loss of my beloved ‘Pickles’ comic every morning from now on… I want you to know that I am a senior citizen and a very, very grateful home subscriber to the Democrat. It is a great joy in my life, now for at least 25 years. I lost my 20-plus years girlfriend almost two years ago – I tried to live the joy of ‘Pickles’ in my life with Dianne. We were looking forward to getting gracefully very old together! My almost 94-year-old mother lives in Iowa and she also loves ‘Pickles’ in her newspaper. It was a joy to talk about it with her.”
Above was one of many objections to the change on the comics page.
William Hatfield, editor of the Tallahassee Democrat, cops a plea:
We should have known that when our parent company sought to streamline our syndicated content vendors, it was touching the third rail of the newspaper industry. But we were unprepared for the veritable avalanche to follow when “Pickles” was removed from the daily lineup of comics…
The number of emails and the obvious care and thought in so many of them was convincing to everyone in this office and the powers that be.
And your notes – good, bad and ugly – mattered.
Opal and Earl will be back in the paper tomorrow, and we can all go back to enjoying their adventures in retirement. To pull this off, we’ll be moving “Doonesbury” and “Mallard Fillmore” to the opinion page.
They add:
“Pickles” will join our new comic strip “Dustin,” which is created by Steve Kelley and Tallahassee’s own Jeff Parker. As a bonus, we’ll be adding the popular strip “Crankshaft” to round out the Monday through Saturday comics page.
Hasn’t the Pickles strip been lately first run and a few days rerun each week? Saturday strips are mostly rerun Pickles strips.