This morning’s Wall Street Journal has a last -page article on the declining space that newspapers allocate for comics.
The writer, Joanne Kaufman, neglects the most important part of the story. Most newspapers are fossil organizations with no capability for making changes that the variety of new media demand. While nearly every daily newspaper in the U.S. is declining, nationally based U.S.A Today is growing and the Anschutz’ network of daily free Examiner’s are growing rapidly and are profitable.
One interesting point is that the S.F. Examiner, one of the network, has dropped comics altogether. I guess comics are irrelevant to the people who read newspapers quickly for the local news and back up their reading with the Internet and car radio.