August saw The Sedalia (Missouri) Democrat abandon the color comic supplement.
Due to budget constraints, the Democrat will no longer publish the color weekend comics section after July.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected many businesses, and the newspaper industry and the Democrat were no exception. The Democrat’s management was unfortunately forced to enact cost-saving measures, which resulted in the decision to end the weekend comics section. Saturday, July 31 will be the last edition that includes the weekend color comics.
“Making any kind of change like this to our publications is always a tough decision to make, but we hope our subscribers understand our efforts are always focused on remaining Pettis County’s primary news source,” Publisher Will Weibert said. “While the weekend comics section may be ending, the Democrat is still full of relevant and interesting local news produced by our newsroom, plus our daily comics page.”
The black-and-white comics published in each edition in the Sports section will remain part of the Democrat’s print edition and the e-edition.
The Sedalia Democrat, which had a Sunday edition before the newspaper comic strip era was late to join the list of papers carrying the Sunday Funnies, only including a section in 1959. Now 60-some years later they join the small, but growing, group who can no longer afford to entertain its readers.
Not having access to recent issues of The Democrat
we don’t what comic strips were in their Sunday comics section.
“The ship is sinking! Quick, jettison the lifeboats!”
Historically, the Sedalia Democrat has not proven to be a very thoughtfully run newspaper. According to the March 28, 1993, New York Times:
“Some newspapers are refusing to run a “For Better or for Worse” comic strip in which a teen-ager reveals he is gay, the strip’s distributor says.
A paper in Sedalia, Mo., said it would not run the five-week series because it was “a conservative paper in a conservative town.”
Doug Kneibert, editor of The Sedalia Democrat, said the newspaper would not run the strip because “we are a conservative paper in a conservative town.”
“We consider it a family comic strip and felt our readers would not appreciate this rather striking reference to homosexuality being inserted into it,” Mr. Kneibert said.
Oh good, now I can sleep those five weeks.
This paper originally carried strips mostly distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Associaion.
I wonder if in later years this newspaper carried Peanuts and/or Garfield?
Personally, I think the circulation of a lot of newspapers would immediately skyrocket if they ONLY published the color comics section (and maybe the crosswords and Sudoku)!
The cousin of one of my friends draws a syndicated comic, and my friend was telling me that his cousin had received an inheritance that put him out of financial difficulty for the foreseeable. I said that was good, because now he can afford to keep on being a syndicated cartoonist.
Chritine Lehman,
Would you mind explaining why you think the circulation of a lot of newspapers would immediately skyrocket if they ONLY published the color comics section?
The comics were in black and white rather than color, but otherwise that sounds like this 1970s weekly tabloid. Circulation apparently around 1,300 in the latter part of its six-plus-years run:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menomonee_Falls_Gazette