Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for July 17, 2020

… and oatmeal cookies.

We could always go back to having town criers.

“Hear ye, hear ye… Item the first: The Orange Clown in the White House hath said something stupid again…”

Oh Pig. Just google it and watch a 15 second segment on Pinterest or something.

Don’t the elves also make shoes.

C’est la vie. The internet is to newspapers what the automobile was to village blacksmiths.

If something happened to the mayor, Rat probably had something to do with it.

Now there’s less old trash in people’s bins. Boo hoo!

Investigative journalism is vital to a working democracy. That’s why I subscribe. If you want it to survive, you have to be willing to pay for it.

And without subscribers, they couldn’t attract the advertisers who provide 2/3 of their revenue!

If the news company never went online, that’s on them.

These days print versions seem like such a waste of paper. I’ll gladly pay the same money to read it online. Just to avoid all that recycling.

Many have already sold to hedge funds who have no intention of continuing to print a paper, irrespective of subscribers.

When I was a kid back in the ’70s the Tampa area had the Tampa Times (PM) Tampa Tribune (AM), the St Pete Times (AM) and the St Pete Daily Evening-Independent (PM) and the tri-lingual La Gaceta (English/Spanish/Italian) plus you could get copies of the Orlando Sentinal and Miami Herald from numerous sources. Now it is down to the Tampa Bay Times which is the old St Pete Times since the Trib folded a few days ago and the La Gaceta is a weekly and the ****ing USA Today if you qualify that as journalism. The old man was a 2 newspaper a day guy, read his morning Trib with breakfast and picked up one of the PM papers on the way home from work. I try to buy a Times from time to time and I have subscribed on-line but I fear it might be just a matter of time before thi area has zero local print media coverage. I know technology has forced the powers that be to consolidate the media via mergers and the bottom line forced other papers underwater but what is sad that many people from my Gen-ex generation along with the slightly older boomers who dove into a print journalism career in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s suddenly found themselves marginalized and competing with the younger techno-savvy kids for a piece of the internet pie. I think Doonesbury did an arc of that same situation with Mike Doonesbury though he got run from the print advertising field……. The times they are a changing……..

When I saw the first panel, I thought the reason there was no paper was because people were now using it as toilet paper.

It’s a mayor conspiracy, Pig! They’re trying to paper over the facts. If I were you, I’d be sheeting…

At least it helps the environment and saves trees.

Pig take 2 of your Debbie Downer pills and call Stephan in the morning ! … Croc Power !

I’m gonna miss the comics page. Where am I to read them now?

Goat actually indulged one of Pig’s naive beliefs?

McClatchy (Miami Herald) is about to be bought by a hedge fund, which usually doesn’t bode well.

perhaps is was the loss of real journalism and hard news? you know, the 5 Ws and H, along with the inverted pyramid and editorialization relegated to the op-ed page?

I buy subscribe to the paper every day for the funnies, actually and some of the local news. The wire services and the major papers lost their objectivity, which I was taught was the most important thing!

People still read newspapers?

Well, people DO still subscribe. Just online.

Oy! Pig is in LaLa land just about on every subject…oink

I hate to sound like a killjoy, but printed newspapers have astronomical costs, and no real advantage over a website. There are a FEW advantages, but also many disadvantages. Maybe they should have a print edition that’s subscription only, for those who want it. Instead of printing and distributing a million copies of the New York Times every single day.

Newspapers should go online and develop a strong local section. The one thing I have a hard time finding online is what’s going on in my own town, and my own neighborhood. And have an advertising SECTION, like a newspaper. A place where people go when they WANT to see ads. Companies pay MORE for those, since they self-target.

No newspaper!? How will we get our comics!…oh…wait…

Goat’s line could be: “The Big Elf in the White House tells us everything we need to know.”

Too much news these days, and you can pick and choose which you want, whether its true or not

Btw didnt miss Rat in all this. Maybe Guard Duck can fill in for a while!

“. . . were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter” From the letters of Thomas Jefferson

Part of the problems of the old newspaper industry is that most of the management never quite understood that people didn’t buy newspapers because they wanted the paper. There’s a similar problem with many of the major online sources, but it’s hard to find such a succinct (or funny) way of describing it. You can see the symptoms whenever what you’re reading suddenly gets covered by a popup, which can often only be “fixed” by killing the browser and starting over (but first adding the site to your “avoid” list).

The venture capitalists that own our local newspaper just decided that it wasn’t making enough money for them, so it’s gone. No local news here at all anymore.

Which is why I sit down every morning and read 3 dozen comics off the web – don’t need papers anymore

Here I was only buying the paper for the comics.

And some of the papers…lie to you.

And Girl Scout cookie rip-offs…

Well, the news of Our mayor is that some wackos…er, i mean citizens…. are attempting a recall because she had the audacity to mandate face coverings as the covid rates rise astronomically here…. How DARE she try to keep us healthy, she’s got to go! Of course, as the first ever female mayor, taking ‘orders’ from a woman may have played into their ire- But then again, when you’re stuck in the terrible twos, it’s important to let Everyone know that ‘you’re not the boss of me!’

150 people so far liked this?

Don’t make me sad, Steph. I work in the newsroom a local newspaper…(actually, your local paper)

The Magic Elves do toys and, luckily, online comic sites…. —With a little help from those Obnoxious Advertisers….

My paper didn’t come again, today. Sigh. My house is an outlier in the paper route, and the local paper can’t get consistent people to deliver so I’m forgotten 2-3 days a week. Fortunately, I can read it online.

Newspapers are online you know. Saves trees, though ad revenues may not be as good.

We still get the paper and read it. They have some excellent writers and have done some very good in-depth investigative pieces. I’m with Thomas Jefferson on this one. Plus, after working all day on a computer, it is nice to sit down in a comfy chair with print.

My last real newspaper was the WSJ, but we went online only beginning in 2018.

Just a general question- who/what is that fluffy white character by Steph’s head in the lead cartoon sketch?

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