The Awl has graphed out the newspaper circulation rates for the major papers going back to 1990. The Wall Street Journal has gained; most other papers have ridden a downward roller-coaster; The L.A. Times has been in an horrifying free fall. From their blog post: Every six months, the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases data […]
Editor and Publisher is reporting the results of a recent report by Audit Bureau of Circulations revealing that many of the largest papers in the U.S. took heavy hits in circulation during the last six months compared to rates during that same period last year. Only one paper, The Wall Street Journal, posted a gain […]
Newsday is putting up a pay-wall on their news website beginning next Wednesday. The website is still free for those who subscribe to the newspaper or Optimum Online, a website owned by the internet cable service that also owns the paper. Those who are not customers of Optimum Online or the newspaper – both owned […]
Interviews» Over on Tall Tale Radio, Tom Racine interviews Kimberly Krautter about her book, “Foreclosure on the Fourth Estate: How ‘spin-fluence’ and ‘info-tainment’ killed the American Newspaper.” In earlier weeks, he interviews Jonathan Lemon about the Monsters of Webcomics exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum and Jeff Ranjo, story artist at Disney, and John Sanford, […]
Bill Wyman published an insider’s view of the failing newspaper industry at Splice Today. We’ve heard most of the reasons he presents, but they bear repeating in light of our ongoing discussions here about what to do about it.1. Consumers don’t pay for news. They have never paid for news. Remember â??shoppers,â? the poorly designed […]
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has announced that within the next 12 months, it will begin to require a fee for online access of it’s websites. The strategy to extract fees from online readers, which is still lacking in many details, has more than a little bit of a “damn the torpedoes” mentality to it, but […]
The TechCrunch website just posted two articles with direct relevance to the ongoing discussions here at TDC about the demise of old media and the potential for webcomics.The first, AOL Newsroom Now Has (Wow) 1,500 Writers reports on just that, the growth of AOL’s reporting capability. Most of those writers were gained from old media […]
Comic Strips» A humorous story about Ernie Harwell who in 1953 conceived of a comic strip featuring a baseball country boy named Amby Dexter. The strip was written at the request of his neighbor who was the head of national sales at United Media. They liked Earnie’s writing, but needed an illustrator. Unfortunately the strip […]
Animation» Gerald Scarfe, cartoonist and illustrator who directed animation for Walt Disney’s Hercules, will host this year’s annual Dundee Literary Festival in Dundee England. Festival runs June 25 to 28.Interviews» Stone Soup creator Jan Eliot on cartooning and blogging: “Being online doesn’t give me ideas. Daydreaming does.”Museums/Exhibits» Speaking once again of Jan Eliot, she’ll have […]
There is no shortage of general news about the Amazon Kindle DX, and the potential for comic distribution has already become a hot topic onto itself.
The Vinyl Café is an hour-long radio variety show, hosted by Canadian author and comedian, Stuart McLean, and heard across the U.S., Canada, and Britain each week. I have a vintage-style Mickey Mouse radio in my studio that’s usually softly tuned to CBC Radio One, but when Stuart comes on the air, his distinct voice […]
Comic Strips» Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau has a piece in Monday’s New Yorker (now available online). It’s an “unedited transcript of the complete G-20 Summit coverage of Roland Hedley, senior Twitter correspondent for Fox News, who appears regularly in ‘Doonesbury’.”» Chuck Barney interviews Dilbert creator Scott Adams on what keeps Scott going after 20 years. […]
» Robert Crumb has announced that he is finished with his satirical take on the Book of Genesis. The British publisher is predicting it will, “provoke the religious right.” Sounds about right. These days a drawing including nothing but a circle in the middle is going to generate backlash from some group. » Those in […]
Today’s edition is the last edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Hearst paper closed after an unsuccessful attempt to find a buyer. The paper will continue online with a bare-bones staff in a format that has been described as a Huffington Post of mainstream media. While a couple of small papers have made the jump […]
Last Saturday as I was walking out of the supermarket, I was offered a free newspaper. It wasn’t totally free, I had to listen to a sales pitch on what a great deal a newspaper subscription is. After the frustration and sadness I felt the day before with the Rocky Mountain News closing, his pitch […]