What that is, I don’t believe anyone knows right now….but printed newspapers will be a relic of the past. News and entertainment wiil be delivered in another form.

This has all been said before, but radio didn’t kill theatre, neither did TV, indeed they are still symbiotic – many TV shows are recorded in theatres
There will always be a demand for news and features you can carry with you. Lightweight, flexible and with no need to re-charge batteries, newspapers can also be read in direct sunlight and don’t break when you drop them.

I repeat: Newspapers will cotton on quite soon to the fact that those who sound the death knell of papers are premature and discover that there’s a way to get readers AND attract sponsors.

That way is to offer them something sexy and/or exciting they can’t get in other media.

So far in 2008, revenues at most papers are already seeing a decrease of year-to-date numbers in excess of 15%, and that’s from 2007 revenues, which was a horrible year. The decline will continue, so the content will also shrink as the newspaper page counts shrink. The comics will also shrink.

Heck, the even the size of most papers are shrinking. Just compare the actual size a your local paper now to what it was two years ago! Publishers are trying to save money by using less newsprint.

There is no conspiracy between newspapers and the syndicates. In fact, just like all vendors to the newspaper industry, the syndicates are being brutalized by budget cuts. The squeeze is on and some syndicates will probably fail or merge in the future.

Just look at recent cuts at the Houston Chronicle. Believe me, there will be more to follow.

So here’s a reality check, editors are living in fear and they are in a panic. Recently, both the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle dumped their editors in days of one another. The meat axe will continue to drop, and with fear permeating newsrooms across the country, editors will not be bold in adding new strips.

In fact, they will be desperate to please the few newspaper readers they have left. Unfortunately, these are the people who love Judge Parker and Mary Worth, while hating Get Fuzzy and Non-Sequitur. Do I like it? No, but it is today’s reality.

Oddly enough, TV networks don’t know how many people are watching their shows, really. Their only source of information is the Nielsen company, which takes the number of people with a Nielsen box attached to their TV who were watching the show and then multiplies that number by something.

“Besides, this system doesn’t allow for something like “Krazy Kat,” which never had many readers when it was running, but it was beloved of the syndicate’s owner, so he nurtured it. Today it’s probably the single most influential comic in history in terms of the number of cartoonists who were inspired by it.”

Unfortunately this is true. I really enjoy reading “Krazy Kat” and I think it’s one of the greatest comic strips in history, if not the greatest. And this radical idea wouldn’t allow for that sort of strip surviving. Maybe the way to secure the survival of such a strip would be to leave all the decisions about who gets the axe to the editors. But that just brings us back to our original topic of discussion, “Editors suck” vs. “Editors don’t suck, they just operate the system that’s existed for over 80 years without question.”

Judge Parker…yes it was reinstated. And, yes, there may have only been a handful that complained to get it back into the paper.

But, you are decrying it’s reinstatement like it didn’t deserve to get back into the Scranton paper. Why? Maybe some readers still like the comic. It’s not like Woody Wilson and Eduardo Barreto are doing a crappy job with it. Now, it likely isn’t for everyone. And, yes, it’s readers are likely older. But, they certainly have a voice too.

If anything decry the Editor who couldn’t figure out how to keep Judge Parker and add something new and fresh. For most Editors, everything gets into the “to hard pile”.

And I’d guess Andy Capp’s made more in traditional syndication than from his anchor paper over the years. You said he was famous in the country when he made the deal … what about those who aren’t famous?

The UK is also dominated by national newspapers that run very few comics per paper. The US has a few big ones but the overall market share is more concentrated in the locals and even the smallest daily paper in the States runs a page of comics. Comparing the two is apples and screwdrivers.

Yet Actors Equity and the Writers Guild of America are very effectual unions.

I’m talking about principles here. A cartoonists union could work in principle, there’s nothing to stop it other than the lack of cojones of cartoonists themselves (with apologies to female cartoonists).

Fact is, the syndicate system has been around for a long time, but it’s not the only system. In the UK, strips are featured in a one-paper deal, because the biggest papers are national. Thus Andy Capp is only featured in The Daily Mirror, but its creator Reg Smythe was famous nationally and extremely well paid.

For top rate cartoonists to be able to subvert the criminally inept US syndication system they will need to go talk to the big paper editors one-on-one and make them an attractive deal.
A Philly paper (for instance) might go for a first class feature which features Philly landmarks and personalities.
It also might pay well over the syndicate rate for that work.
The net is the key to the independent cartoonist’s future, but cartoonists need regular income to make them sit at a drawing board all day creating new work.
That income could certainly come from a one-paper deal they carved out themselves

The words “radical” and “newspaper” just don’t go together LOL!