Astor Hailed on Departure from 'E&P' After 25 Years

By: Greg Mitchell Dave Astor, a senior editor at E&P who has covered the syndicates beat since 1983, has been hailed by many cartoonists, columnists and other creators he has covered ? along with executives for major syndicates ? upon learning of his departure from the magazine later this week.

Astor was one of about 20 staffers for Nielsen Company business magazines who lost their positions in the latest job cuts announced last week.

Several columnists have praised Astor at http://columnists.com. For example, Dave Lieber of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes, ?I started reading his work on columnists in E&P in the early 1990s. Astor was the lone regular chronicler of the insecure, always striving to be better U.S. newspaper columnist?.Thank you, David, for your stamp of validation, for me and for hundreds of others like me.?

?It's a stark commentary on the dire state of the business that such a hardworking, sensitive, perceptive and experienced journalist can lose his position for economic reasons,? wrote Samantha Bennett, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and columnist for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

?Astor liked to write about the grunts: the columnists in the heartland, the cartoonists churning out great work in their communities, the people in the trenches. The people who do journalism, often great journalism for low pay and under tough conditions,? wrote Mike Leonard of The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind.

Tom Spurgeon at http://www.comicsreporter.com observed, ?Astor's coverage of comics and syndication news wasn't just important to what we're able to do here with the CR blog, I think it made him clearly the #1 journalist in the U.S. routinely covering comics.?

Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist (http://dailycartoonist.com): ?On a personal note, for those of us who have had a long interest in newspaper cartooning, Dave?s work for E&P was a must read. He is definitely the founding father of syndication reporting.?

Claudia Smith, director of advertising & public relations at King Features Syndicate, wrote the following in a letter to E&P today: ?In the years since I first joined King Features and learned about this industry, I have come to believe that no publication has covered the business of syndication as effectively as Editor & Publisher, and no journalist has covered it with more knowledge, insight and passion than David Astor. Those of us at King Features who have known and worked with him salute his years of service to this industry and wish him well in his future endeavors.?

In phone conversations with E&P staffers in the past week, other syndicates? executives likewise paid tribute to him.

Astor joined E&P as an associate editor in early 1983. He worked both the ad and syndicate beats for a few months before switching to syndicates-only in late ?83 and was promoted to senior editor in 2000. In 2006, he received the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists? ?Ink Bottle Award? for service to cartooning.

Before coming to E&P he served as editor-in-chief of the Rutgers Daily Targum, then as a reporter for The Daily Register in Shrewsbury, N.J. After getting a master?s at the Medill School of Journalism, he was hired as a reporter for what was then called the Passaic (N.J.) Herald News (where he met fellow future longtime E&P editor Mark Fitzgerald).

Since 2003, he has written a weekly freelance humor column for The Montclair Times, one of the biggest weeklies in N.J., and has helped the Times win two New Jersey Press Association awards for best editorial page.

E&P has established a new email for editors to receive tips, information and commentary in this field: syndicates@editorandpublisher.com.