I wrote last week about changes to our comics pages, which began this week. Peanuts and Spot the Frog are out. Lio and Over the Hedge are in.
There’s been a little outrage, but not the torrent we expected or at least planned for.
Here’s one email we received: YOU LITERALLY RUINED MY MOTHER’S DAY - I HAVE BEEN READING PEANUTS
(CHARLIE BROWN) SINCE 1958 EVERY DAY, AND
WAS ENJOYING THE OLDER ONES ALL OVER AGAIN. CHILDREN PROBABLY DON’T
READ THE COMICS SO WHY ADD SOMETHING
ABOUT WOODLAND CRITTERS. CHARLIE BROWN IS ABOUT LIFE.
It’s hard to know how to respond to such visceral pain. And I would not attempt to tell this reader that she has no right to feel that way. She does. But I think that our Sunday story about the changes explained our position in an honest and open way. That matters.
Our reporter, Tim Clodfelter, has dabbled in comics, and he knows his stuff. And let me say for the record that I am a huge Peanuts fan. I named my first pet Snoopy if that’s any indication. But the past years have been tough on Schulz & Co. As cheesy as it is to watch the Family Circus kids talk about the Internet, it was in many ways much more painful to look at the Peanuts gang frozen in time. At first, there was comfort in their constancy. Then it became sort of like a museum, a homage to the dead rather than a conversation about life.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Concerning “Then it became sort of like a museum, a homage to the dead rather than a conversation about life.” Bologna!! It’s ironic. See “Thought for Today”: “History is a better guide than good intentions.” Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, todays Journal, page D4—the very same page where “Peanuts” oughta be!
I have to disagree with the emailer’s statement “CHILDREN PROBABLY DON’T READ THE COMICS SO WHY ADD SOMETHING ABOUT WOODLAND CRITTERS” because I know for a fact that there are many kids who only read the comics. That point is irrelevant anyway because I’m sure there are many adults who would rather read about woodland critters than read re-runs of a comic strip.
Isn’t it funny that you get more criticism for changes to the comics than you do for anything else? An interesting experiment would be to randomly exclude a feature for one day throughout the month and then see how much reaction you got to each. My prediction: stock tables would get 4 complaints, op-ed 10 complaints, obituaries 300 complaints and comics 2,000,322 complaints.
I suppose you can argue that running Peanuts is no different than all the reruns on cable. We have two pages of comics, which is a lot for a newspaper of our size. Even with that space, there is limited real estate. With Sudoku, it’s spilled out into other pages. We have to choose, and I would rather try something new than say we can never change. Again, I like Peanuts, but when I read the strip, especially on the days, when it is slightly different in size, I am instantly reminded that Charles Schulz is dead.
So give Lio a chance.
Ah! Something new. How ‘bout a poetry column, Ken? I’ll help.
I will miss Spot the Frog. Have you no heart?
In regards to Good Grief-I hate to say it, but it’s time someone woke up and realized that Charles Schultz is not with us. Change is painful-even if your favorite comic strip gets dropped from the paper. Now, can someone please explain the weird storylines in “Get Fuzzy?!?”
Get Fuzzy is basically a dysfunctional family in a different set of clothes/fur. Bucky is aggressive and scheming, sort of like the Brain from the Pinky and the Brain cartoons. Satchel is passive and an idiot savant, profound in his stupidity and often wandering accidentally into genius insights. Rob is the slacker in all of us who tries to keep the peace. It’s easy to compare this to the cat/dog/man triangle of Garfield, but I think the energy of Get Fuzzy is more biting. None of those lasagne jokes etc.
Can we have a vote before you change comics again?
I think that would be fair for your readers.
of course not. Journalist make the news.
We’ve done polls and reader surveys in the past, and we’ve used them as guides about the direction of our comics pages. We’ll use them again, as warranted. But there’s a balance between letting readers or the newsroom control the content of the paper. It’s not a democracy. We value reader input and advice, but ultimately we have to and get to make the hard decisions.
All kidding aside. How could you run the newsroom as a democracy? That’s like saying a teacher who is considerate of student feelings lets them call the shots. No way. Hard decisions always fall to you, right? That is, after you consider input. Customers, on the other hand, get their final say when they buy or don’t buy the paper. And that’s part of what influuence your decisions, I bet.
Looks to me that I will go the way of Peanuts. Its gone so am I when I am up for renewell.
Well, I hope you will reconsider. Lio and OTH are good strips, and they are new, and I think their wisdom and humor will surprise you.
Okay, I call for a truce with Lio. Today, ‘It’s Your Teacher’ seemingly called for one with those of us upset by the WSJ‘s decision to remove ‘Peanuts’ from its pages. Cute and clever.
I like Lio. But, again, there are other strips that could’ve been replaced.
Agreed. I made the Wah-WAH-Wah noise as I ate my breakfast and read the comics.
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