Thank you very much.

Maybe Frank Rizzo can state whether the “poll was rigged”? Either way,18,000 votes shows a lot of passion either way and it was done online.

Many “octogenarian” readers of Judge Parker probably barely can operate a computer. If the AJC didn’t “give a crap” about the readers they probably wouldn’t have taken the time to ask, but just acted.

What do the say about opinions again? They are like….

http://www.kevinandkell.com/

No offense to its creator or its fans, but as a weekly newspaper editor and a voracious comics reader (and one named Kevin, at that), I find “K&K” labored, occasionally confusing and uninvolving. I have a hard time believing that “Rose is Rose,” for all its cutesy overload, didn’t come close to edging out a one-joke strip with characters that are difficult to distinguish from each other. So readers didn’t find “Ink Pen,” one of my favorites, worth keeping around–fine, I can live with that.
But if Atlantans really rallied to save “Kevin & Kell” over “Rose is Rose,” I don’t know my fellow citizens anymore.

As for “Judge Parker,” as far as I’m concerned the only reason “dramatic” strips like it, “Mark Trail” and “Mary Worth” exist is to provide fodder for the Comics Curmudgeon.

Ambled off-topic a bit, I realize, so thanks for your indulgence.

I called and canceled my subscription. The person did not ask why – I told her. She said “yeah, we’ve lost a lot of subscriptions over this.”

I then called the Ft Worth Star Telegram (great comics section) and bought a new subscription. When I volunteered why I canceled DMN and switched to FWST the person said “Interesting – I’m just filling in on the phone – we’re short handed – but I’m one of the editors. We’ve always thought there were better ways to save money than by cutting comics. They’re pretty important to our readership. Thanks for offering that – I’m about to head into a meeting and I’ll reiterate this point.”

Unfortunately, they’re part of a chorus singing “It’s not hip to like newspapers” that does have an effect on readers and advertisers. Ridicule and dismissal are powerful weapons, even if their precise impact is hard to calculate.

But Tom’s lack of interest in his own community is also a profound weapon working against newspapers. Newspapers can be viable if they are properly targeted to a coherent geographic, rather than demographic, audience. Newspapers should be a “something for everyone” product, but within a tight distribution area in which they can highlight local interests like — as in Tom’s example — what the shopping and employment opportunities are likely to be.

Bear with me, because it’s also not hip to look back more than five years, but when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, we sat through standups, acrobats, Broadway music and other irrelevancies to see what we came for. Because we lived in a three-network universe, we assumed that we had to do that and didn’t resent it. And we thereby absorbed some interests other than our own — if we didn’t embrace them, we at least were exposed to them.

Today, a 16 year old in Austin is not going to sit through a bunch of other acts to get to the music he wants — he’ll go up to his room and download or surf to exactly, precisely, what he wants. As a result, he knows more about another 16 year old in Japan or Australia than he does about the 30 year old who lives across the street. And, as he grows, goes to college, joins the military, whatever, he will continue to stay in that fragmented demographic of people who share his interests and are exactly like him.

It’s fatal to newspapers, but it isn’t good for any of us.

Another major flaw in the attempts by the genius visionaries to resuscitate papers is the unsupported notion that they are entertainment, like TV, radio and the movies. They are not. While they should of course, be pleasing, engaging and entertaining, they are a local utility, like the gas company. And if people don’t feel invested in their local communities, they have no need to know what’s going on there. They not only don’t know about that fellow across the street who isn’t in their demographic, they also don’t give a damn what happens to him or the town he lives in.

Fatal to newspapers. Not good for any of us.