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Gannett Comic Switch – 2 Minute Warning

1 minute 11 comments

… will introduce a revamped and updated comics section on Monday, Jan. 15…

Beginning Jan. 15, we are excited to bring to our San Angelo readers a refreshed comics section…

So, here’s what we’re changing beginning Jan. 15…

Most(?) Gannett newspapers made the switch last Fall, those left behind will be making the switch this month.

It seems that January 15, 2024 is the deadline for USA TODAY Network newspapers to complete their comics page switch over to some combination of The Gannett 34.

The Knoxville News Sentinel (via MSN) editor Joel Christopher revealed the changes today:

I’m pleased to announce a refresh of our daily and Sunday comics pages beginning Monday…

Comics that will run daily and Sunday: Argyle Sweater, Baby Blues, Baldo, B.C., Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Born Loser, Close to Home, Crabgrass, Crankshaft, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, For Better or For Worse, Frank and Earnest, Garfield, Hagar, Jump Start, Luann, Marmaduke, Mother Goose & Grimm, Non Sequitur, Pearls Before Swine, Peanuts, Pickles, Rose is Rose, Wizard of Id, Ziggy and Zits.

Comics that will run Sunday only: Curtis, Foxtrot, Hi & Lois, Mutts, Sally Forth and Shoe.

New to The News Sentinel daily and Sunday are The Argyle Sweater, B.C., The Born Loser, Close to Home, Hagar the Horrible, JumpStart, Marmaduke, Rose is Rose, Wizard of Id, and Ziggy.

New to the daily comics page is Crabgrass.

New to the Sunday section is Curtis, Hi and Lois, Sally Forth, and Shoe.

The News Sentinel is one of the few Gannett papers running all 34 comics (on Sundays).

Going missing daily and Sunday will be Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, Rex Morgan, M.D., Frazz, Arlo and Janis, Bizarro, Brewster Rockit, Overboard, and Wallace the Brave.

Missing Sundays will be Get Fuzzy and Doonesbury.

Missing from the daily comics pages will be Bliss, Breaking Cat News, and Curtis (who gets a Sunday spot).

Also via MSN Jose Franco of The Greenville News told readers:

After conducting a survey, the Greenville News and Greenvilleonline.com will introduce a revamped and updated comics section on Monday, Jan. 15. Your updated package will incorporate beloved favorites including Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Garfield, and Peanuts.  ? 

Your lineup will include most of the following [emphasis added] comic strips: Zits, Family Circus, Hagar, Dennis the Menace, For Better or Worse, Baby Blues, Pickles, Fox Trot, Pearls Before Swine, Jump Street, Ziggy, Marmaduke, Non-Sequitur, Crabgrass, Crankshaft, Luann, Baldo, Frank & Ernest and Born Loser, Close to Home, Argyle Sweater, Mother Goose, Rose Is Rose, Wizard of Id, B.C., Hi & Lois, Mutts, Curtis, Shoe, Sally Forth and Dustin.  

Those first four mentioned are a sure thing. All of The 34 are listed but only “most” will show up. Dustin, not part of The 34, is mentioned – a mistake or one of those Page 2 strips?

What will disappear from Greenville News comics pages because they did not make Gannett’s selected list are Barney Google and Snuffy Smith(d&S), Pluggers(d&S), Doonesbury(d&S), Pardon My Planet(S), Mary Worth(S), Prince Valiant(S), Kid Town(S), Magic Eye(S), Rhymes With Orange(d), and Heathcliff(d).

This time it is Yahoo News bringing us Claire Kowalick of The San Angelo Standard-Times:

Beginning Jan. 15, we are excited to bring to our San Angelo readers a refreshed comics section with some new comics that we have not been able to offer before.

Clair gives us the rundown of what’s coming and what’s going:

To make room for some new titles, a careful review noted some comics that will be sunsetted for our editions.

New titles for the San Angelo Standard Times Sunday edition will include Baby Blues, Pickles, Foxtrot, Jump Start, Ziggy, Marmaduke and Non Sequitur.

San Angelo Standard Times will be ending its Sunday run of B.C., Doonsbury, The Argyle Sweater, Wizard of Id, Rose is Rose, One Big Happy, Frank and Ernest and Gasoline Alley.

New titles for the daily edition will include Pickles, Jump Start, Ziggy, Marmaduke, Crankshaft, Frank and Ernest and Born Loser.

Ending for daily editions will be the run of Bound and Gagged, Rose is Rose, B.C., Wizard of Id, Non Sequitur, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.

Remaining in the daily paper (I don’t have access to a current Sunday edition) are Garfield, Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, Beetle Bailey, Peanuts, Zits, Baldo, Baby Blues, For Better or For Worse, Pearls Before Swine, Blondie, Luann, Hagar the Horrible, and Crabgrass.

Here’s Michael Shearer from Akron Beacon Journal:

So, here’s what we’re changing beginning Jan. 15…

On weekdays and Saturdays, we’re adding Wizard of Id, Dennis the Menace, Peanuts, For Better or Worse, Non Sequitur, Luann, Baldo, Frank and Ernest and Born Loser.

We’re keeping Crankshaft, Crabgrass, Pickles, Zits, Baby Blues, Garfield, Jump Start, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Mother Goose & Grimm, B.C., Hagar the Horrible, Family Circus, Ziggy, Maramduke and Argyle Sweater.

And we’re dropping Hi and Lois, Rex Morgan, Rose is Rose, Judge Parker, Frazz, Doonesbury, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, Between Friends, Big Nate, Bizarro and The Flying McCoys.

Direct from Edward Harris and The Utica Observer Dispatch:

On Monday, Jan. 15, the Utica Observer-Dispatch and uticaod.com will roll out a fresh lineup of daily and Sunday comics. The new comic lineups are part of a relaunch across the large USA TODAY network. On Monday, Jan. 29, the Times Telegram will debut its new comics lineup. The new O-D Weekend funnies section will be delivered to readers, including Times Telegram subscribers, on Jan. 20.

I guess the deadline is the end of the month.

Back to Edward:

The comics changes will include losing a few comics but gaining others. 

The Observer-Dispatch’s Monday through Saturday comics section will be losing two strips, while two strips will be added on Sundays. 

Decades-old standbys, such as Blondie, Beetle Bailey and Family Circus, will remain throughout the week in both papers.

Here is the comic lineup to expect in the Observer-Dispatch Monday-Saturday: Blondie, Zits, Beetle Bailey, Family Circus, Hagar, Dennis the Menace, Garfield, Peanuts, For Better or Worse, Baby Blues and Pickels [sic]. 

Sunday’s expanded lineup will include Blondie, Zits, Beetle Bailey, Family Circus, Hagar, Dennis the Menace, Garfield, Peanuts, For Better or Worse, Baby Blues and Pickels, Pearls Before Swine, Jump Start, Ziggy, Marmaduke, Non Sequitur, Crabgrass, Crankshaft, Luann, Baldo, Frank & Ernest and Born Loser. 

Here is the lineup to expect in the Times Telegram Monday-Friday: Blondie, Zits, Beetle Bailey, Family Circus, Hagar, Dennis the Menace, Garfield, Peanuts, For Better or Worse, Baby Blues and Pickels [sic].

I have no access to recent Observer-Dispatch comics sections to see what the readers are losing.

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Comments 11

  1. Once upon a time the daily comics spread over two pages in the Newark Star-Ledger. There was a large box at the top of the left hand page for Family Circus, Ziggy, and Dennis the Menace. I believe that there were over forty strips to read every day, along with puzzles, crosswords and horoscopes. Doonesbury was printed larger, in the editorial section. The Sunday funnies were in two sections that I, my sister and my father would argue over who got to read which section first. We read even the comics that we did not like. Only a few of them are here. I’m glad that some of the old favorites are online, since they don’t show up on this list.

    1. The Sunday Newark Star-Ledger is a shadow of it’s former self….sad…and no Saturday print edition which started last weekend.

  2. A longggggg time ago, my brother and I shared a newspaper route delivering the Newark Star-Ledger. Every week on Wednesday or Thursday they would deliver the weekend guts of the paper…the ads, Parade magazine, and the special weekend sections. We’d assemble all of these in the evening, stacking them in the corner of the living room ready to slip them into the outside sections that arrived on Sunday. As a bonus, when we had finished, we’d each sit down with our own early edition of the Sunday comics. A great perk for two kids that were in their early teens!

  3. Gannett blows. And, this is what happens when private equity money buys media. Surprised it has taken them this long. Gannett is owned by the New Media Investment Group is managed and controlled by another private equity firm, Fortress Investment Group. Fortress is owned by the Japanese conglomerate Softbank. Apollo Global Management funded the acquisition with a $1.792 billion loan.

    Apollo is all about getting their money back. Product be damned.

    What is so frickin’ hypocritical, is these dumb Editors reguritating the corporate narrative about “…these comics are from a survey of readers across the USA TODAY Network of publications” (so, I thought local mattered?!?) and “…if you’re upset by this news, we understand. Change is not easy, and we’ve made many adjustments to the print newspaper in recent years based on our changing world and print readership trends. (in another word – get over being upset, we are doing this no matter what, because corporate saw this as a honey hole to save a bunch of money). Finally, this is really good “…this will allow us to continue to put more resources into our local journalism” (oh, so, local does matter?!?).

    Again, Gannett blows.

      1. Whether he’s Paul Nichols or whoever, he’s right, Gannett blows.
        Not letting individual newspapers choose their comic strips is a disastrous decision for the future of newspaper comic strips. This isn’t a matter of keeping the good strips and cutting the not-so-good ones. Gannett wants to cut costs, perhaps subscribers should cut their costs and end their Gannett subscriptions?
        The only good that can come from this is it pushes comic strip creators to find other venues for their work. If I owned a syndicate, I’d be just as worried. This is not a new idea, but maybe each syndicate could publish a magazine of a month’s worth of their comic strips? I won’t subscribe to a newspaper, but I’d subscribe to that.

    2. With you 100% on that, brother. I’ve yet to see any case where a private equity acquisition turned out to be a good thing for the business. Yep, Gannett blows.

  4. While this extended series of individual reports about each Gannett paper “revamping” (or rather, “slashing”) its comics section has been useful (just to see each scorecard of what gets added and what gets dropped), it has been extremely distasteful to see how each paper’s editor has tried to sugarcoat the bad news, trying to persuade readers how “wonderful” these “exciting new features” are going to be. What a load of crap.
    Gannett has selected a tired collection of dull, ancient (mostly zombie) strips, and has persumably wangled out a massive volume discount from the syndicates, because they are in a position to impose that lame collection onto dozens of defenseless editorial offices, in complete disregard of what readers would actually prefer. This is just window dressing for the sake of being able to claim that their papers offer a comic section. Gannett doesn’t care one iota whether anyone would bother to keep a subscription to read any of those features, and they would probably prefer if all of their papers dropped the comics entirely.

  5. Who cares about the new comics! This newspaper is horrible now I don’t know why I keep taking it. Now its delivered by the post office which means I am missing my paper sometimes! The 4-5 pages of news is not worth it. Horrible horrible!!

  6. Knoxville Sentinel News dropped my favorites:
    Frazz, Arlo and Janis, Bizarro, Brewster Rockit, Overboard, Wallace the Brave, and Bliss

    Knox news suggestion to use https://www.usatoday.com/comics/ fails due to not carrying the missing comics. It also requires payment subscription to create an account to maintain my own saved favorites.

    Also I checked out https://www.gocomics.com/mycomics which is missing a few comics.

    suggestions? anyway to get Gannett / Knox news to reconsider?

    Comics and local news are the highlight of my Knox News subscription… Not a sports person

    1. The USA Today comics page is Comics Kingdom which would carry Bizarro.
      The rest of the comics on your list are available at GoComics https://www.gocomics.com/comics/a-to-z
      if you have a GoComics account you need to edit the My Comics page to include those you want.
      The chances of Gannett changing their directive any time soon is zero. The local editors, include the Sentinel News editor, will adhere to Gannett instructions if they want to keep their jobs.

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