News and notes
My newspaper column
Editorial Page editor Allen Johnson discusses a variety of changes to the editorial pages in his column on page H2 in the Ideas section.
The one change I want to emphasize here is the addition of "Doonesbury" to the comics page in the Life section. Beginning tomorrow, "Doonesbury" replaces "For Better or For Worse." We're dropping "For Better or For Worse" because the cartoonist is beginning to repurpose previously published strips.
We know that the strip is popular, and we will miss it, but we publish original comics, not reruns.
In other news about the newspaper:
* Business reporter Richard Barron has started an e-mail newsletter that comes out at 4:30 p.m. weekdays and wraps up the day’s business news.
Called Biz Bytes, it includes breaking news about jobs, economic development, corporate moves and markets. It also features local business achievements and people news. Some of the articles are going to be in the next day’s paper, but Richard also includes information that is exclusive to Biz Bytes.
It's free, of course, and especially timely because it goes out before the end of the business day. Sign up by going here.
* Our Life section has won one of the nation's most prestigious journalism awards for features.
The News & Record won first place in general excellence in the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards contest. The judges wrote:
"The News & Record entertains and informs in its lifestyle section. From the significant story about the church members who moved into a neighborhood to be better able to serve their neighbors to a story about online gamers, the content is reported and written well. The photographs are excellent, and the design reaches out to readers by using impact and organization."
I want to publicly recognize features editor Susan Ladd, day desk chief Kim Stacks Mills and photo director Rob Brown and their staffs for their exceptional work.
* It is the fall so it must be time for this year's Readers' Choice Awards. Go to GoTriad.com and vote for your favorite restaurant, nightclub, television personality, theater, gallery, clothing store, gym, and even hair salon.
By voting you will have a chance to win a $100 gift certificate. Balloting ends Sept. 17 and results will be announced Oct. 16.
* We started "The Joke’s On You," our Friday cartoon caption writing contest, in January 2007. In the feature, artist/cartoonist Tim Rickard draws the cartoon and readers provide the caption. It is one of our more popular reader interactive features. It is also one that we copied from The New Yorker
Last month, the Evansville (Ind.) Courier-Press debuted a feature with the same name. To their credit, they cited us.
"The title, 'The Joke's On You,' is shamelessly stolen from a newspaper in Greensboro, N.C., that does the same thing," an editor wrote. "We like the idea so much that we sought out a cartoonist to do it here."
I asked Tim his thoughts. Ever the humorist, he said: "They stole the idea from us. We stole the idea from The New Yorker. That shows that we have much higher standards."
* Glenn Chavis, a community columnist for the Guilford Record, has written his 200th column. Glenn, a retired pharmaceutical executive, lives in High Point. He writes about High Point, his family and African-American history, unfiltered.
He describes his columns as "smack-you-in-the-face-style." I like that because that is what he wanted to do and what we wanted to publish.
Glenn is a fine writer, a sharp thinker, and an all-around great guy. I look forward to celebrating his 300th column.
Comments (14)
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How about moving Rosie Yardley to your
comic pages?
Posted on August 31, 2008 8:29 AM
NO. NO. NO. You can't (I mean CAN NOT) do away with "For better or for worse". I finally learned to live without "Calvin & Hobbes" but to think about taking away "For better or for worse" is unthinkable. This is the best strip you have in this paper and "Doonesbury" can't even come close to holding a candle. You are doing away with my reason for looking forward to getting the paper in the mornings. This comic strip was about family, friendships, love, life and death. I was looking forward to the new insights and wondering what Lynn Johnston would do differently this time. Please, Please leave this strip in your paper.
Posted on August 31, 2008 12:48 PM
if you do not publish comic repeats, when are you taking out blondie, beetle bailey, dilbert, garfield, and dennis the menace?
Posted on August 31, 2008 5:48 PM
Jane, if you're asking a sincere question, which of those actually are repeats (as opposed to old and predictable)?
Posted on August 31, 2008 9:35 PM
Reruns are not necessarily a bad thing. I have long wished you carried "Classic Peanuts." I know Charles Schulz is dead, but his strip is timeless. Other papers, large and small, have no problem carrying these repeats. Have you done a comics survey that offered the option of continuing old strips?
Posted on September 1, 2008 11:22 AM
Reducting Opion Pages from two to one is the worst things the N&R has ever done. The timing was awful, coming during one of the most exciting elections in our lifetime. It is hard to understand why the N&R wants to dumb down the paper when the people who are reading it are more intellectually aware than anytime in history. If you want to save paper, reduce the size of those gigantic pictures on the front page of most sections. I know the morale is bad at the N&R, but what have now is some people who want to kill the paper. You are going down the wrong path. However, this is not the end of the world, it can be changed back. I hope you will re-think these changes.
Posted on September 1, 2008 12:33 PM
The one page format reduces my reading time from 30 minutes to less than 10 minutes (I only scan letters to the editor.} This a considerable cut. Please re-consider.
Posted on September 2, 2008 2:56 PM
How about getting rid of all those national editorial writers, and get us just ONE local writer that not in bed with the good ole boys in Raleigh!
Posted on September 3, 2008 6:32 AM
OK, I see you are not, apparently under any circumstances, going to rerun "For Better or For Worse." Shame! Please give me the name of a newspaper that is going to carry it, if you dare.
Posted on September 4, 2008 7:28 PM
Sorry, Ms. McMillin, I don't keep track of the comic strips other newspapers publish.
Posted on September 4, 2008 7:48 PM
i am still disappointed that you dropped for better or for worse (but it is still in the burlington paper). i am glad you are publishing the sunday pearls before swine.
Posted on September 7, 2008 2:23 PM
I also can't believe you've gotten rid of For Better or For Worse. Check their web site -- the strip will continue to have new material, with occasional replays of old strips -- isn't that what Doonesbury and lots of the other strips do now to give the writers a break? Really I think a lot of the problems on the comics page could be resolved if the paper wasn't constricted to one page of comics. How about the format that many other papers use, two half-pages of comics -- that would give a lot more room to experiment. And you could even return the crossword puzzles to the Life section, where most of us think they belong.
Posted on September 7, 2008 8:04 PM
Well, it seems like it is a lot more often than occasional to me.
Doonesbury does repeats, but only when he is on vacation, not for the rest of the strip's life.
We don't do two pages of comics because it is too expensive. Many papers do it, but generally they are larger than we are.
Posted on September 7, 2008 8:35 PM
I would like to post an objection to the size of print that was used for the crossword puzzle in the want ad section in today's newspaper (12-3-08). It was too small and very hard to read. Please use the type that you usually use, it is much more user friendly.
Posted on December 3, 2008 1:51 PM