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The Freep Gannett 34 Exemption

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During an email exchange (Hi Grant) it was revealed to me that the Detroit Free Press (Freep) was a part of the Gannett/USA Today Network that was not following corporate orders to run some combination of The Gannett 34. The full daily Gannett comics lineup of 33 (no Sunday only Foxtrot) below.

Instead the Detroit Free Press run a different selection of comics on their comics page:

As Grant tells us Macanudo, The Lockhorns, Grand Avenue, Get Fuzzy, Arlo and Janis, WuMo, Rhymes with Orange, Dogs of C-Kennel, Nancy, Overboard, Heart of the City, Lio, Phoebe and Her Unicorn, and Speed Bump run daily in The Freep (the Sunday edition also print Frazz, Barney & Clyde, Wallace the Brave, and Scary Gary) though none are currently part of The Gannett 34 seen below:

So why is The Free Press allowed to flaunt corporate orders?

For that we turn to Wikipedia where we find that The Freep “is the largest local newspaper owned by Gannett…” But it is not its circulation figures that gives it veto power over HQ orders, it is the rest of the sentence that solves the mystery: “and is operated by the Detroit Media Partnership under a joint operating agreement [joa] with The Detroit News, its historical rival.”

In 1989, the paper entered into a one hundred-year joint operating agreement with its rival, combining business operations while maintaining separate editorial staffs. The combined company is called the Detroit Media Partnership.

Apparently complications of that JOA is the reason the Detroit Free Press is the only(?) Gannett newspaper exempt from from adhering to The Gannett 34 command from headquarters.

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Comments 12

  1. The Detroit Free Press not following Gannett orders still carries rerun abused for years Get Fuzzy?

      1. Though I wonder what the current Detroit News daily comics lineup is like which is what the Detroit Free Press can’t touch or acquire (and some may or may not be part of the Gannett 34).

  2. I have a somewhat off topic situation in Chicago that has been going on for about 2 years: When the Chicago Tribune dropped Dilbert in March 2023 they replaced it with Grand Avenue daily and Sunday, but at the time the other major Chicago newspaper the Chicago Sun-Times has been carrying the Sunday Grand Avenue strip in the Sunday Chicago Sun-Times comics and as of recent times the Sun-Times still hasn’t dropped Grand Avenue from its Sunday comics section. There must be a reason for this, and I have written and posted on social media to the Sun-Times the situation and haven’t got much response. Wish someone can find out the situation on why the Sun-Times hasn’t dropped from the Sunday Sun-Times comics pages Grand Avenue when the other major Chicago newspaper (Chicago Tribune) carries since 2023 Grand Avenue in the daily Chicago Tribune comics and Sunday Chicago Tribune comics!

    1. Shouldn’t the question be “Why was The Tribune allowed to run the Sunday Grand Avenue when The Sun-Times already had that contract?”
      Anyway… As newspapers began dying off and offering less for syndicated material territorial restrictions fell by the wayside quite some time ago. If some paper wants to pay big bucks for territorial rights to a comic strip in its circulation area the syndicate would be happy to accommodate them – but that inkwell has run dry.

      1. But the Chicago Tribune runs Grand Avenue daily and Sunday in its comics pages and the Chicago Sun-Times runs Grand Avenue Sundays only in its Sunday comic section when they should have dropped it 2 years ago when the Chicago Tribune picked up the strip to replace Dilbert. I have been wishing the Chicago Sun-Times to drop Grand Avenue from its Sunday comics replacing it with either:
        * Sunday episodes of Arlo and Janis or Frank and Ernest (Both are strips running in the daily Sun-Times comics but not in the Sunday Sun-Times comics section).
        * Another strip to run on Sundays in place of Grand Avenue, like maybe Mother Goose and Grimm, Crabgrass, Big Nate, or Little Oop.

    2. You found another one. The Detroit News also has some outside of the Gannett 34. The Detroit News has 22 cartoons on weekdays. Out of those 22, 13 are in the Gannett 34 and then there are Heathcliff, One Big Happy, Pooch Cafe, Herb & Jamaal, Rex Morgan, Frazz, Loose Parts, Moderately Confused, and Six Chix. The Detroit News does not publish on Sunday.

      1. To be clear The Detroit News is not a Gannett newspaper,
        it is a part of the Digital First/Alden Capital group.

      2. I also just realized that I lied. The Freep also has Prince Valiant on Sunday.

    3. I would love one of the Chicago papers to carry my strip.

      1. It used to be a routine matter of course that hometown cartoonists were carried by a local newspaper. Maybe Darryl’s crusade to have one of the Chicago papers drop Grand Avenue will result in a slot for Beware of Toddler (no disrespect to Mike Thompson).

      2. Beware of Toddler is distributed by King Features, and Grand Avenue is distributed by Andrews-McMeel!

        It’s odd for any rival syndicate to replace a strip with a rival syndicate.

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