The World of Coos Bay Slashes 75% of Its Comics

From the publisher of the Coos Bay newspaper The World:

Dear Reader,

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to alter our daily lives…

Meantime, you may notice some changes to our regular lineup of comics, columns and features, and the resulting number of pages in each issue.

Soon after we bought this newspaper on February 1, we learned that the monthly bill for the comics and features appearing in The World exceeded that of a full-time reporter. The virus has enhanced the urgency for both expense reduction and prioritization of content, and right now I would rather have a reporter on the streets – and eliminate a few comics – than the other way around.

“[E]liminate a few comics.”

That translates into dropping 10 out of the 13 they were running.
Below is a before and after look at The World’s daily comics page.

Here are the survivors and the victims:

Dilbert
Frank and Ernest
The Born Loser
Zits
Classic Peanuts
Baby Blues
Rose Is Rose
Luann
[The] Grizzwells
The Family Circus
Moderately Confused
Reality Check
Herman

In the meantime it looks like their Sunday (now Saturday) Funnies remain.

While in Terre Haute the Tribune-Star, like many newspapers, is reducing its publishing schedule down to five days a week. From Editor Max Jones:

Earlier this month, the Tribune-Star announced it would reduce publication of its print edition to five days a week, beginning the weekend of May 2 and 3. Going forward, there will be no print editions on Sundays and Tuesdays.

The weekend edition we will publish on Saturdays will look almost identical to what the traditional Sunday newspaper looked like. Most of the feature material that appeared in the Sunday edition will appear now in the Saturday edition, including the package of advertising inserts, the color comics section [emphasis added], and the weekly TV/entertainment book … It will also contain the usual Saturday comics page [emphasis added].

The only comics related change is they will no longer run the Tuesday comics, except:

The Wednesday newspaper will also contain the puzzles/games that formerly appeared in the Tuesday edition. It will also have both Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s episode of the “For Better or For Worse” comic strip that often carries a story line throughout the week.

It’s growing more and more clear that the newspaper editors are more afraid of the puzzlers and gamers than of the comic strip fans. Though, as I understand things, they pay for the dailies in a Monday-Saturday block; so why not run them?

(Sorry no list of comics for the Tribune-Star.)