The Glenwood Springs (Colorado) Post Independent will no longer run comic strips.
The Post Independent is a free, (now) five day a week newspaper serving a ski resort area in Colorado. With the coronovirus difficulties and ski season ending some difficult choices had to be made.
My mission is to preserve as many of our great team members as possible for as long as I can, which is why I will make the changes to our business model that allow us to fulfill our commitment to connecting our audiences with the information they want and need through this time of crisis. That said, the PI team will have pay cuts and reduced hours.
Among those choices is the abandonment of all their comic strips.
We will be removing the comics and horoscopes. However, we will be keeping the weather and puzzles.
The why: By eliminating this, we keep a person employed at the PI. The weather page remains as a public service.
I understand that if there was ever a time we needed a laugh, it’s now. We’re using the opportunity to look at options and a chance for innovation.
They will also no longer run editorial cartoons.
We will be revamping our opinion page, terminating all national and local columnists contracts, as well as removing the opinion comics from the page.
…in this day and age with such deep divides in partisan politics and growing but restrictive thought bubbles, we didn’t see how it connects us, especially the national columnists and political cartoons.
Elsewhere in the paper the comics changes were discussed:
Since Raehal announced the changes to the paper, the strongest reaction he’s received had to do with losing the comics section at the back of the paper.
And he gets it — he also enjoyed reading the comics.
“That was personally painful for me, not just because I enjoyed them, but my kids really enjoyed them,” Raehal said.
Dropping the comics was primarily about preserving payroll.
“It basically came down to a decision of, lose comics, keep staff, or keep comics and potentially lose a staff member. I chose keeping someone on our team. And I would do it again,” Raehal said.
Friday, April 3, 2020, was the last day they ran comics.
Their comics line-up was Pearls Before Swine, Zits, Shoe (Chris Cassatt was an area guy and they still ran the strip with his byline), Baby Blues, Garfield, Mother Goose & Grimm, and Non Sequitur.
On their puzzle and weather page they ran Dilbert and Frazz.
I’m sure the syndicated weekly Kid Scoop is also a casualty.
Maybe people who like newspaper comics will have to get access to the Denver Post for their daily/Sunday comics fix?
Much as I love comics (obviously), I can’t disagree with the hard choices he’s made, and I admire the open honesty of his explanation.
Comics could return when advertising revenues return, but the position of local newspapers now is that they don’t know how much of those revenues will return when it’s over — that is, how many of those loyal local businesses will be around and how much they’ll be trying to retrench from the cuts they’ve had to make.
Hard times call for honesty and he’s dishing it out as few chain papers would (or are). No promises based on things he can’t predict, and that’s not a bad thing.
But the fact that people have told him they miss the funnies may help him decide what comes back when he can begin rebuilding. I hope they keep those cards and letters coming.