Will Stars and Stripes Drop Beetle Bailey? Doonesbury is a Certainty
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Famous in the annals of comic strip circulation boosting is the early 1954 ousting of the then three-year-old Beetle Bailey comic strip from the pages of the Tokyo/Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes. The publicity was a windfall for Mort Walker‘s comic strip with a tripling of newspaper clients within a few years.
It could happen again, without the resulting boost in circulation, as the U.S. Department of Defense is making noise about taking control of the Stars and Stripes editorial reins.
From Corey Dickstein at Stars and Stripes:
The Pentagon said on social media Thursday it would take over editorial content decision-making for Stars and Stripes in a statement from the Defense Department’s top spokesman.
“The Department of War is returning Stars & Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters. We are bringing Stars & Stripes into the 21st century,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top public affairs official and a close adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, wrote in a statement posted to X. “We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”
The statement appears to challenge the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes, which while a part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity has long retained independence from editorial oversight from the Pentagon under a congressional mandate that it be governed by First Amendment principles.
While Beetle Bailey may survive the change of editorial control, Doonesbury certainly won’t and will be dropped from the Weekend Edition Sunday Comics when/if Pete Hegseth’s minions take control.
And if this administration’s past practice is any indication of future prospects some other comic strips will be dropped due to “woke” ideology or accusations of participating in DEI implementation.
The Sunday Comics lineup consists of Beetle Bailey, Doonesbury, Zits, WuMo, Loose Parts, The Other Coast, Marvin, Baldo, Carpe Diem, The Argyle Sweater, Pearls Before Swine, B.C., Over the Hedge, Speed Bump. Strange Brew, Frazz, Garfield, Red and Rover, Crabgrass, JumpStart, and Prickly City.
The daily comics lineup: Bizarro, Loose Parts, Frazz, Pearls Before Swine, Non Sequitur, WuMo, Carpe Diem, and Beetle Bailey. Gunston is a weekly comic strip in daily format that appears in the weekend editions.
When the woke and DEI standards are liberally applied it could result in half the comics not passing muster.
David Bauder for Associated Press, whose reports will be booted from the new S&S, also reports:
The Pentagon said Thursday that it is changing the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes so it concentrates on “reporting for our warfighters” and no longer includes “woke distractions.”
That message, in a social media post from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s spokesman, is short on specifics and does not mention the news outlet’s legacy of independence from government and military leadership. It comes a day after The Washington Post reported that applicants for jobs at Stars and Stripes were being asked what they would do to support President Donald Trump’s policies.
The Pentagon also said that half of the outlet’s content would be generated by the Defense Department, and that it would no longer publish material from The Associated Press or Reuters news services.
“This will either destroy the value of the organization or significantly reduce its value,” [S&S publisher Max]Lederer said.
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