Dave Astor Exits 'E&P' After 25 years

By: Greg Mitchell Dave Astor, an E&P senior editor who covered the syndicates beat since 1983, was hailed by many cartoonists, columnists, and other creators ? along with executives for major syndicates ? when they learned of his departure from the magazine at the end of October. Astor was one of about 20 staffers for Nielsen Co. business magazines who lost their positions in a round of job cuts.

Several writers praised Astor at http://columnists.com. Dave Lieber of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote, "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. news-paper columnist. ... Thank you, David, for your stamp of validation, for me and for hundreds of others like me."

Samantha Bennett, president of the National Society of News- paper Columnists and a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote: "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." (E&P continues its broad syndicates-related coverage both in print and on the Web.)

"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 No. 1 journalist in the U.S. routinely covering comics."

Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist (dailycartoonist.com) offered, "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 and public relations at King Features Syndicate, wrote the following in a letter to E&P: "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."

Astor joined E&P as an associate editor in early 1983. He worked both the advertising and syndicate beats for a few months before switching to focus exclusively on syndicates 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.

In his days before joining E&P, Astor served as editor-in-chief of Rutgers University's Daily Targum, and then worked as a reporter for The Daily Register in Shrewsbury, N.J. After earning his master's at the Medill School of Journalism, he was hired as a reporter for what was then known as the Passaic (N.J.) Herald News (where he met fellow future longtime E&P Editor-at-Large Mark Fitzgerald).

E&P has established a new e-mail address for sending tips, information, and releases: syndicates@editorandpublisher.com.