By: E&P Staff Bruce Tinsley, whose comic strip ?Mallard Filmore? celebrates its 15th anniversary this month, tells The Wall Street Journal's Michelle Kung he's netting more clients than before, despite the challenges faced by cartoonists these days and the woes of the industry in general.
Launched in June 1994, Tinsley?s conservative strip stars a right-leaning reporter who happens to be a duck. Tinsley claims he?s actually increased the number of newspapers that carry ?Fillmore? (currently around 400), since the last presidential election.
?I?ve definitely added papers since Obama took office, which is what happened when Clinton took office as well,? Tinsley tells the WSJ. ?I?m online only for more newspapers? Web sites and in more papers that only have an online presence now, the most recent being the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and it?s weird ? but I?m still here.?
He also says he believes newspapers aren?t going to die, but it?s unclear what form they will assume.
?I think newspapers are always going to be needed; I just don?t know in what form they?ll still exist,? Tinsley says. ?The best case for the need for newspapers in an electronic age that I?ve read is a Leonard Pitts column in The Miami Herald where he essentially lays out what each medium does best. He specifically points to state and local news coverage ? stories that readers rely on to know how to vote, what to think about scandals in their local state house ? that no other medium covers as well, and probably could or would want to. I suppose local radio does it. But you know much much time radio has.?
Tinsley appears on ?The O?Reilly Factor? tonight to discuss his strip?s anniversary.
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