Museum Drawing To a Close

By: Dave Astor The International Museum of Cartoon Art plans to leave Boca Raton, Fla., after half a decade of struggling to remain solvent.

Museum founder Mort Walker said he has three offers to buy the museum building, which he hopes will sell for about $5 million. The museum is $2 million in debt, with $1 million of that money personally lent by Walker.

The city of Boca Raton, which donated the land for the museum, would have to approve of any buyer. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale reported that the museum might be purchased for use as a jazz club, health club, or hotel.

Walker said the museum -- which was founded in 1974 and officially opened in Boca in 1996 -- has enough money from the Hearst Foundation and "friends" to operate at its current location for about two or three more months. The "Beetle Bailey" creator, whose comic strip is distributed by Hearst's King Features Syndicate, said he hopes the museum will reopen in some form in New York or Connecticut.

Not Enough Funding and Visitors

Why didn't things go better in Boca? Walker said one reason is that the museum didn't receive as much money as expected from local wealthy donors, with one possible reason being that these donors didn't feel an institution celebrating cartoons was prestigious enough to be associated with.

And Walker -- who thanked Hearst and others for their support over the years -- said Boca wasn't enough of a "destination" to attract the number of visitors the museum would have received in a bigger city. Walker recalled that he worried about this when Boca first tried to get the then-New York-state-based museum to relocate to Florida, but was won over by the offer of free land and reports that Boca was one of the fastest-growing arts communities in the country.

As the museum struggled, there were various plans to save it. For instance, a proposed affiliation with Florida Atlantic University didn't materialize, and an auction this spring to sell early Mickey Mouse drawings drew bids nowhere near what the museum needed. "One thing after another fell through," said Walker.

The cartoonist -- who turns 78 on Sept. 3 -- said he'd be willing to serve as an adviser to a relocated museum, but is looking forward to having more free time. When asked, Walker estimated he devoted about 40 hours a week to the museum during the approximately nine months he spent each year in Boca (he also lives in Connecticut). Walker even helped design the museum building, which houses more than 160,000 cartoon originals.

The Boca facility isn't the only cartoon museum that has struggled. For instance, a short-lived museum in Washington closed up shop during the latter 1990s.

Walker emphasized that cartoons are an important American art form, but said many people apparently don't have a strong desire to see them in a museum setting, noting, "They read them every day and then toss them away."

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TMS DROPPING 52 TV STAFFERS
Positions Will Go By February

Tribune Media Services (TMS) is eliminating 52 of the 462 positions at its entertainment products operations in Glens Falls, N.Y.

This comes several months after TMS acquired a majority interest in TVData, its major TV-listings rival. Termination dates for the 52 TMS and TVData employees range from the end of this month to February.

TMS stated that the reductions "eliminate duplicate positions in the editorial, information technology, and sales divisions." The employees let go will receive packages that include severance payments, outplacement services, and more.

About a month ago, TMS also made a number of management changes in Glens Falls.

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DOT-COM PLUNGE TAKES IPIPE
But J&H Is Assuming Some Services

IPipe, the Richmond, Va.-based Internet firm well-known to syndicates and cartoonists, is winding up operations -- another casualty of the dot-com downturn.

"Expected funding didn't materialize," said iPipe President/CEO Rich Johann.

IPipe may sell its ad-serving business in the near future. Meanwhile, J&H Communications Group, a Richmond company that Johann is also involved with, plans to take over a number of other iPipe functions. These include distributing more than 50 syndicated features to online customers, and hosting the Web sites of many National Cartoonists Society members.

Johann has less than a 5% stake in the 1995-founded iPipe, but a majority interest in the 1994-founded J&H. He expects J&H to be profitable with the help of low overhead -- including a staff of four. At its peak, iPipe had about 35 full- and part-time employees; there are none now.

IPipe grew rapidly before this year's dot-com plunge. For instance, last year it began providing America Online with "Zits," "Baby Blues," "The Family Circus," "Mother Goose & Grimm," and various other comics, columns, and editorial cartoons.

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'PARK' PLACED ON UFS ROSTER
New Comic Strip Is Set In Cybercafe

A comic that includes satire of consumerism, technology, and culture is being offered by United Feature Syndicate.

The title character of "Rudy Park" manages the House of Java Cybercafe. His boss is a 21-year-old entrepreneur.

"Rudy Park" is by Darrin Bell, 26, an editorial cartoonist, and Theron Heir, a pen name for a prominent journalist.

Their 40 charter clients include the Chicago Sun-Times, the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Detroit Free Press, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and The Seattle Times. "Rudy Park" has already been published in the San Francisco Chronicle and at http://www.nytimes.com


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CHANGE FOR WORK COLUMN
It Moves From Universal To Passage

Mildred Culp will offer "WorkWise" through her Clive, Iowa-based Passage Media company starting Sept. 1.

She spent the last four years with Universal Press Syndicate, which dropped "Workwise" and several other features. (Universal also added features, giving it roughly the same number this year as last year.)

The columnist (culp@workwise.net) told E&P Online that being dropped has some advantages for a workplace writer. "It keeps me in touch with what the American worker is going through," she said.

There is also a streaming audio version of "WorkWise."

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COLLEGE CREATORS REUNITE
They're In King's 'Wittiest' Package

Two of 12 editorial cartoonists in "The Best and the Wittiest" package attended the same college at the same time.

When the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald's Jeff Koterba joined the King Features Syndicate package, he reunited with the Worcester, Mass., Telegram & Gazette's David Hitch. Both cartooned for the Gateway student newspaper at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.

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SHNS HAS ROOM FOR 'ROOM'
New Home-Improvement Column

Scripps Howard News Service is offering the weekly "Room by Room" home-improvement column by Matt Fox and Shari Hiller, hosts of Home & Garden Television's "Room by Room" show.

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ET CETERA ...

Reader response led the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram to reinstate "B.C." by Johnny Hart of Creators Syndicate and "Barney Google & Snuffy Smith" by John Rose of King Features Syndicate. ...

The self-syndicated "Ethics & Religion" column by Michael McManus (michaeljmcmanus@cs.com) reached its 20th anniversary. ...

Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services is offering a "College Survival Guide" written by KRT interns. ...

The New York Times Syndicate is offering an excerpt from the book, "Expression: Showing and Hiding Our Feelings," along with color photos. The excerpt coincides with "The Human Face," a four-part TV series co-produced by TLC and the BBC for Aug. 26-27 airing. ...

Jim Russell, who did "The Potts" comic in Australia continuously from 1940 to the end of his life, has died at the age of 92. ...

Lorenzo Music, the TV voice of Garfield the cat, has died at the age of 64.

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