News-Record.com

Robert Niles has some good advice, and it makes me cringe.

If you call your readers stupid for reading the content in your newspaper, don't be surprised when they quit reading your paper altogether.

He's referring to an L.A. Times article about readers of the comic strip, "For Better or For Worse." I don't know that the writer is actually calling them stupid as affectionately poking fun at them. Or maybe with them.

Sad, isn't it, when you can't really tell what the writer's point is in an article.

Still, Niles is right. It's one thing for a newspaper reader to make fun of the stuff in the paper; heck, it's his right. It's another thing when it comes from the newspaper itself. If I were a "For Better or For Worse" reader, I'd be chagrined.

I say all this because, apparently unlike the Times, we are canceling the strip beginning Monday because it is going into repurposed reruns. Our practice is not to publish reruns. So, despite the strip's popularity, we're going to let it go. I expect some pushback, too. Happens.