By: Joe Strupp A week after cutting six comic strips and moving a half-page of the daily funnies to another location -- which drew some 1,200 complaints -- The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. has returned two of the strips to print.
"Virtually no one liked the change," Editor Jim Willse told E&P. "We were not surprised by that. By rearranging the grids, we were able to squeeze back in the two most-requested strips, 'Pickles' and 'Frazz.'"
Those two comics, along with four others -- "Rose Is Rose," "Nest Heads," "Heart of the City," and "Loose Parts" -- were cut beginning July 27. The paper also reduced the two-page comic presentation to a page and a half, and relocated the half-page to another space in the paper.
"We cut the comics to save one page of newsprint, which saves around $300,000 a year," Willse added.
But in an editors note on the front page of the feature section yesterday, the paper revealed the angry backlash and announced the two comics would return. "Most of you thought the moves were dumb, to put it mildly," the note stated. "Dismayed. Unhappy. Disappointed. Upset. These were some of the feelings you expressed in your comments."
The note added that some e-mails were signed by entire families. "A handful of educators made a special plea for a specific comic they used in the classroom," the editor's note added.
Of course, as the paper has reported, all of the comic strips, including those four still removed from print, are on the paper's
Web site.
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