Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 23, 2010

If it’s one of those papers where Doonesbury IS on the Editorial page, with Mallard Fallmore, as in our paper, just give her the comics & keep the editorial section.

Better keep her away from the interwebs as well. Especially gocomics.com.

Now he should show her the real reason to buy a newspaper; it makes a great lining for the bottom of a birdcage. I’d like to see you do that with an iPad or a Kindle.

^You could, but it’d get kinda expensive!

Is this the fourth wall or fifth wall breaking?

More post-modernism. Ho-hum.

Like to see yo do a crossword on an ipad…. I love getting the newspaper. Go to the internet for comics they don’t carry, and news from other countries for a more rounded perspective. And yes, for breaking news as well. But there is nothing like sitting down with the paper!

I love the newspaper and used to get the local daily - till they stopped delivering and kept charging. Never did get that resolved and finally gave up. But still get the local weekly.

I’m guessing Mike didn’t pay for the premium service offered on sunday?

I admit, I like the classified ads of our local underground paper. How many different ways can YOU say, “Woman looking for man. And woman.”

Comics? In the newspapers? Sounds far fetched..I mean, how do you post comments in a newspaper? Duh!

On the margins?

I didn’t say a word when they made the paper narrower, I held my piece when they combined Nation with World. I kept quiet when Opinions and Letters to our Editors were squeezed on a smaller page BUT SUNDAY they finished the final distruction of my local Rag. Two pages of comics disappeared! They had made the comics smaller, cut the opening panels, sneaked furniture ads in, but Sunday I picked up the opening page and that was it. Shook it. No middle comic pages. And they kept Mary Worth!

I might as well subscribe to the NYT who have never had a sense of humor but a great fiction section titled News. They don’t have comics cause they lose something in translation from Russian.

As comics are lost from newspapers, paychecks are lost. Paychecks might be a small part of the reason our favorite cartoonists work so hard. GoComics could become all reruns.Buy a paper. Read the comics last. They help take the sour taste out of the news.

The newspaper was worth the price when Prince Valiant was half a page by itself. For me at the time it was the only part worth reading. When they cut it down in size of the others and didn’t care how the artwork looked I was a disallusioned child.

I remember as a kid when my parents subscribed to both the Hartford Courant and the Hartford Times. The Times took their Sunday comics seriously, with 8 full pages of glorious color.

I’ve seen Doonsbury on the comic page, the editorial page, and in a few instances published on both. Contrary to what some have posted here, it’s not “just a comic”… it’s commentary, like a column, and as such it invites commentary in return.

It’s good that Garry can laugh at himself in this recent newspaper theme, as he has played a role in its questionable future.

I posted yesterday, but late in the day, about our local paper. Now I know I’m not alone. So narrow it won’t stand up in your hands, columns so narrow they are now printing obits two columns wide since putting it in one would have way too many hyphenated words and charge so much that no one says anything anyway. Mallard Fillmore on the editorial page, and no Doonesbury except on Sunday. Oklahoma is the reddest state in the union, and my town the reddest with badly slanted newspaper.

Once upon a time, Prince Valiant was a full page and the best selling cartoonists were paid a fortune.

Newspapers live and die with advertising. As corporations cut spending, advertising goes. BP and Toyota have given new life to some papers with their advertising to try to improve their images.

As the town crier went, so shall the newspapers go. The really sad thing is the bloggers are responsible to no one and promote their own agenda more so than newspapers.

I wonder if Kilgore Trout ever wrote a sci-fi story about people who one day started receiving a strange newspaper that had comics featuring THEM.

For me that would be WAY embarrassing.

poohbear, I don’t know about Trout, but King has written himself in as a writer of his book and as a participant in his own story, most notably in his Dark Tower series. I think that King called it meta-fiction, so what GT is doing this week could credibly be called meta-comics.

Newspapers won’t go. Like radio after the emergence of television, they will need to continually re-invent themselves to fit particular niche communication needs as their front-and-center position resets itself. But like the New York Times itself, newspapers are no longer the instrument of record, and that will be painful for them to adjust to even as their ideological slant propels them deeper into the pit of their own making.

SuperGriz - Thank you. Now I remember. My memory isn’t what it used to be. My newspaper doesn’t carry Mallard Fillmore or Doonesbury in either section. I live near Camp LeJeune. Don’t know if that is the reason or not.

Isaac Asimov also put himself as a third-person character into one of his mystery novels, Murder at the ABA (American Booksellers Assn.). The novel is narrated by the protagonist, a writer named Darius Just, who has disparaging things to say about that “Old goat” Asimov. In fact, Asimov gets into a running battle of footnotes with the narrator, as to the veracity of the reportage. A very weird read!

I had learned everything in the newspaper in my English class at the High School. I think it was stupid to learn about each sections and etc in the newspapers but the meanest teacher forced me to learn about that newspapers in my English class. Sighhh! I wanted to learn in English to improve my English but not that “newspapers” course in English class. sheeshhhh! I would curse the meanest teacher about it in English class. sighhhhhh! :-/

Asimov did that sort of thing several times, especially in his “Black Widowers” mysteries that he wrote for Ellery Queen magazine. However, I think Asimov did it just so that he could talk about himself.

Surreal! …or maybe not so real.

You’re blowing my mind here!

Today’s strip is an unfortunate breaking of the fourth wall. DOONESBURY does this well, at times, but usually the entire strip is set up in a meta- aspect. The characters know for the entire strip that they are creations performing for us. Today’s strip does not fit that group. Today’s strip feels like a weak joke that Trudeau would have tossed if he had given himself a bit more time.

DOONESBURY belongs on the comics’ pages. MALLARD FILLMORE, if a paper wants it (god knows why; it’s not good), on the editorial pages. DOONESBURY has long-running, rounded characters & many stories that use political opinion only incredibly obliquely, if at all. MALLARD FILLMORE is political opinion or commentary every day.

Lew, I feel your pain & disdain over the physical shrinking of the newspaper. I recently tried to demonstrate to a friend how I would fold a paper to throw them when I had a paper route in the 1970s. When you tri-fold one of today’s papers, you end up with a baton, not a [pad]. It looked ridiculous.

I am also sorry that your paper just dispensed with many of the comics. Newspapers do not realize that many comics are the best writing in the paper.

You are incorrect about THE NEW YORK TIMES, though: Comics translate perfectly well into Russian, and Russians would love a bourgeois paper like the TIMES.

Larry, I agree with you. Comics, even when kept, lack the space for interesting visuals. CALVIN & HOBBES commented on this many years ago.

Nemesys, I agree that newspapers will find a place, just as radio has, but I dispensed yesterday with your argument against THE NEW YORK TIMES & in favor of Fox News.

Replying to later remarks of yesterday:

Thanks, Nemesys, for the article on media bias. I suggest that you read it, however. It has some seriously faulty logic & other faults, primarily that the article two authors worked only for conservative “think tanks” (the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, The Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace). I suggest reading MEDIA MATTERS’ article on the “Measure Of Media Bias”: “Former fellows at conservative think tanks issued flawed UCLA-led study on media’s ‘liberal bias’”.

In addition, Nemesys, the media fawned disgracefully over Bush-Dick and continues to fawn over Senator McCain. You can hardly claim a media bias favoring President Obama. Fox News, by the way, demonstrates the rightward incline of the mainstream media.

Pschearer, your claim to love our Constitution & your claim that you will protect our individual rights founders over your eagerness to ban others from contributing to this forum if they use a term that you find personally offensive. It is not a surprise that you cannot join the A.C.L.U., which defends EVERYONE’S freedom of speech, from Noam Chomsky’s to Rush Limbaugh’s.

Lew, your claim about the biases of THE HARTFORD COURANT was a weak claim, even from you. The piece headlined “Another Scandal, Another Lesson” is an opinion piece, a column, written by one of the COURANT’s staff columnists. It is NOT reportage. Either (A) you cannot tell the difference between the reportage & opinion, or (B) you will say anything to try, feebly, to win the argument. Lew, either you do not know how to read a newspaper or you will lie (VERY BADLY) to win an argument. I feel sorry for you, Lew.

Brian: I’m sorry you failed to understand what I wrote yesterday. I repeat, the ACLU defends some right sometimes and other times attacks other rights. There is much more to rights than just speech.

Plus, regardless of what you think, I am not denying anyone’s rights when I flag them for what I maintain is inappropriate and insulting speech. You should know by now that posts are removed by GoComics, not by the people who flag objectionable material.

hi @doctor toon, long time no see. But I did remember that you have a large collection of comics.

I’m not an artist, so I’m always impressed by the way someone can just draw a few lines and there’s Sam with those big trusting innocent eyes.

Living in the boonies of the Western Central Coast our Daily Paper originates 98% of news from far far away and we get 2 TV channels without cable.

The comics generate NO bottom line so they are miniscule in size and variety.

–Doonesbury is usually on the opinion page .. but I gave up the newspaper entirely - even the Sunday Only sub – because they wanted to charge an exhorbitant fee for the weekly TVGuide.

Thank you GoComics and all the rest of the other internet cyberspacenuts (like me) for helping to save my sanity.

It looks like Sam is starting to develop some of her mother’s other Big Trusting Innocent features, too.

It’s kind of hard to tear a piece off the iPad in the outhouse.

All this talk about how newspapers are better, from people who are reading the comics online, mostly for free.

BRIAN When a newspaper (Hartford Courant, Sunday, June 20, 2010) prints a story on the front page, top, left hand column, people expect that to be news, not opinion. guess where opinion should be? Very good. When the first headline reads “Another Scandal, Another Lesson”, the observant reader might be warned that this article may not be all fact. The headline itself screams opinion.

Now I realize you do not think this Tribune owned rag is a translation of The Daily Worker like the other Tribune owned paper in my town with four pages of Escort ads.. You also believe the NYT is unbiased. I’m sure you think the City’s opposing paper is Nazi Tabloid Trash. Do you ever read the opposition or do you just believe the Party Comrade faithful. You should hear both sides. Neither is totally correct.

Congrats on the new liberal Federal courts you spoke of yesterday. I see Obama.s violation of Article 5 was shot down by the court. Drill, Baby, Drill

Pschearer, when you flag material, then you are demanding that it be removed. It matters little that you do not perform the actual removal. Demanding the removal of any comment simply because you find it insulting shows how little you respect freedom of speech.

As to the A.C.L.U., please specify what you mean. Your vague statements of “some rights sometimes” & “other rights” mean almost nothing.

Lew, the column entitled “Another Scandal, Another Lesson” was obviously an opinion piece commenting on the news story on the same subject on the same page. If you cannot tell the difference, then you need to read the newspaper much more slowly & carefully.

I would suggest that you read my comments more slowly & carefully, too. For months, you have baselessly accused me of dodging the draft during the Vietnam War. Now, you claim that I called THE NEW YORK TIMES “unbiased”. Please point to where I said that.

As to the ruling by the Judge Feldman: Ronald Reagan, a pro-oil, anti-regulation president, appointed him in 1983, and he owns stock in Transocean. Is it any wonder that he ruled the way that he did? He demonstrates the crying need for a progressive administration.

I hope that you keep chanting “Drill, Baby, Drill”. I would love to see “Drill, Baby, Drill” hung around the neck of each Republican & Tea Bag candidate this fall. If the Democrats play their cards right (unlikely), then they can cover every Republican & Tea Bag candidate with their own beloved oil.