newspapers

White space

I read The Miami Herald every morning as I’ve always done, but I subscribe to the online edition, rather than have it delivered to the house. I read the e-edition daily.

I recently found out that since I subscribe to the online edition, I can read all of the McClatchy-owned newspapers that way – The State in Charleston, SC; The Olympian (Olympia, WA), The Modesto Bee (Modesto, CA), The Telegraph (Macon, GA) and so many others, which I like to do.

One thing I noticed, with just The State newspaper so far, there might be more, is that they just end a story on the page and leave white space. Now maybe since I’m reading it from another state, ads are there and they just don’t show where I am reading from, but I don’t think so. I saw on the front page of the Sun-Herald, the Biloxi, MS newspaper, this big gap next to the masthead, but inside the paper, there is none of this white space stuff.

***Lots of white space on page 1 of the Sun-Herald in Biloxi, MS***

I’ve been in and around the newspaper industry for so many years, and I’ve never seen this. I used to like this tv show called 800 Words. This guy wrote a column for the newspaper and it had to be exactly 800 words, he would add or subtract words to make it 800 in the column he wrote. The show really has nothing to do with his newspaper column and it’s a dumb name for such a great, but the 800 words concept in a way, it sort of reminds me of this – just end it wherever you want.

***At left is a large white space at the end of a story and at right, is another large white area in The State.***

It’s sort of interesting to see in the paper, where it just goes blank, but it messes with my sensibilities. It’s such valuable space to be wasted, a little panel cartoon could fit there (Tomversation perhaps?). And speaking of the comics, it’s one of those things were every McClatchy newspaper has the same comics page – same comics, same layout, etc. No individuality.

***More white space in The State newspaper.***

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He wanted to read the NY Times

Yesterday I was walking into Publix and there was this guy sitting on the ground. He asked me for $5.00 to buy The New York Times of all things. He waved a couple of dollars, but he said he needed more. This was a new one – the NY Times – which intrigued me. I had a $10 and $20 bill, so I gave him the $10 bill.

I asked him how much the New York Times is, out of curiosity. I hadn’t bought it for years, and I’ve only purchased it in New York, never out of town. He said it was $6.00 for the daily. We started discussing the price of newspapers, and which ones we read. I found it interesting. He said he used to buy the Times for 50 cents and has read it since he’s been a boy.

I heard a priest one time say, “If you are going to give someone money with conditions attached, then don’t.” And I always remembered that. So I didn’t care what he used the money for, but I know it was the Times because when I left Publix a bit later, he was reading the paper.

When I mentioned this to friends, they had all sorts of shit to say, like, “He saw you coming,” or “You can get the paper free in the library,” which I had to remind him does not help the media company if we don’t support them.

I saw an image or story last week where a guy living on the street was seen reading the same book over and over. A passerby saw this and gave him his Kindle filled with books. One time in New York, I kept passing this girl sitting on the floor in Grand Central reading a book. Day after day, there she was reading a book, after awhile, she had another book. I felt sorry for her, but she seemed to give dirty/angry looks at people who looked at her, so I was hesitant to approach her.

The Powerball is up past $1 billion, it would be ironic if the Publix guy bought a ticket or two with the remaining money I gave him, and won!

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Dropping cartoons

Editor and Publisher has an article on the disappearing of syndicated comic strips in newspapers. The NY Post dropped the few they had years ago and I stopped reading the Post after that – and for other reasons.

***Ginger Meggs comic strip by Jason Chatfield.***

The major hit was in Australia, where so many popular strips, including the 100 year old Ginger Meggs was dropped by hundreds of newspapers, all owned by Rupert Murdoch and Nine Entertainment – a problem and monopoly right there. By the way, Murdoch also owns the NY Post. I guess he just doesn’t like comic strips.

He is replacing them or enhancing puzzles and games in the newspapers rather than print the comics.

Ginger Meggs is printed on GoComics daily, and I like some of the others that were dropped, which, like Ginger, you can read online now.

Swamp by Gary Clark is a favorite of mine – when it would pop up online somewhere. You can read that online at swamp.com.au and Snake by Allan Salisbury can be seen here: snakecartoons.com/snake.htm.

I read the comics online at various sites – GoComics, Comics Kingdom and other websites and I think the majority of readers do that these days.

After so many years of trying to be syndicated in newspapers, I don’t think that’s where I want to be now. For one thing, I think it’s a precarious place to be to make a living. Every day you may be losing clients (and money), not gaining new ones and it seems that the readers are mostly online anyway.

But I do agree that newspapers should carry cartoons and comics pages for those that read them there. It’s part of life, it’s been part of all of our lives – everyone that is alive today has lived with comic strips and panels as part of their daily newspaper. As long as the newspapers are still printed and published, why not include them? They are pop culture, part of everyday life.

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No respect from the newspapers

Friends ask me how my comic “career” is going.

I always tell them these days, that it’s going well. No, I’m not published in newspapers, but honestly I don’t want to be.

Being published in newspapers was always my goal but those days are over. I sometimes wish I was part of the height of the cartooning days, when cartoonists’ works were worshiped. From the turn of the last century until possibly the 1980s, I think that was the time to be part of it all. In the very early days, they were treated like movie stars.

I think the 1940s and 1950s might have been the best time. Now I think it’s all about online publication.

Just as new performers, singers and such, are discovered online and on apps, so are new cartoons and comics. It’s where the readers are, and viewers. Many people watch tv and movies via apps now, they aren’t subjected to the scheduling and whims of tv networks.

It’s where I can be creative, do my own thing, have short deadlines and just not be controlled by a large corporation – gaining the same readership as I would if I was printed, maybe more.

I’ve lived by cartoonist Jason Chatfield‘s quote: “Don’t curate your art to what gets likes. Curate it to what you like.” In that way, my readers find me, rather than me searching for readers.

And now he introduced a new one that I am living by: “We need to forget the newspapers. They forgot us a long time ago,” referring to cartoonists and comic strips. Keef Knight, another cartoonist, said it first. But Jason brought it to my attention.

And it’s not just cartoons. I’ve been reading newspapers online from other areas of the country. I subscribe to them and read the e-papers which I like flipping through. I noticed that so many of them don’t seem to be published locally, even though they are local daily newspapers.

One newspaper in upstate New York had as their main above-the-fold headlines stories on Nevada’s wet weather and a story about Olympians from California. Nothing related to upstate New York on the front page, not one story! I unsubscribed from that paper after a few days. It wasn’t what I was looking for. It’s owned by USA Today and it seems that that is the news that they print – what USA Today prints in all the newspapers they own.

Back to Jason Chatfield – he took over an old Australian newspaper comic strip called Ginger Meggs a few years ago. It will be 102 years old this November. It’s gone through quite a few cartoonists since it’s inception in 1921.

Well, the newspapers in Australia that publish the strips has cancelled Ginger and that’s the end of his 102-year-old newspaper publication. It appears as if the newspapers there have abandoned all cartoons. There seems to be a newspaper monopoly ownership in Australia.

Ginger Meggs will continue online at Jason’s website: gingermeggs.com and GoComics will post reruns here: gocomics.com/gingermeggs.

Hence, the quote: “We need to forget the newspapers. They forgot us a long time ago.” But I’ve been way ahead of Jason and Keef on this one for quite a few years now.

I interviewed Jason a few years back for my 10 With Tom series when he was president of the National Cartoonist Society. By the way, he is also a New Yorker magazine cartoonist.

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The New Breed

I’m still finding things as I clean out my old room. In among to the school newspapers were newspapers that published my cartoon panel.

In the 1990s, I was part of a thing King Features called “The New Breed.” It was a different cartoon every day sent in by various cartoonists. They were grooming us at the time for better things. So many of the cartoonists that were part of the The New Breed are professional cartoonists today, with their cartoons published daily in newspapers.

I started a marketing biz at the time and sort of stopped after having so many cartoons published. I sometimes regret it now, but I guess that was my fate to go in another direction.

What I would do is send in a batch of cartoons and they would buy the ones they liked and have them published in hundreds of subscribing newspapers as part of the feature. This sample shown hre is from the Kansas City Star. I like how they have the feature at the very top of the page. There I am with Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, Marmaduke and Peanuts! Mine is the Santa one.

King Features would send back the ones they wanted changes on, after editing the cartoon – simple things like, “change this word to this,” or “take the shading off this.” I don’t know why they just didn’t make the changes themselves, but I guess they didn’t want to touch the art and they had the cartoonists make the changes on their own work.

This was all done by snail mail. I would mail in a batch and they would mail back the edited ones that needed changes. I would make the changes and snail mail the cartoons back and they would appear in the newspapers a few weeks later.

While I’m trying to grow my audience on my current work today, I don’t think I want to be published in newspapers. It’s too restrictive and most people read their cartoons online or on social media.

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School days

Today is the first day of school in Miami-Dade County. The private schools started last week.

The reason I bring that up is because I started going through things in my old room at my parents house and I came upon so many things I had forgotten I had like these school newspapers.

For many years, I had a company that printed school newspapers among so many other things. I found all the newspapers I had saved that we printed – years and years worth of papers. I plan on giving them to the schools – a time capsule from the 1980s through the early 2000s.

I used to celebrate the start of school – I used to go to the beach on the first day – the beach was dead due to it being the first day of school – and I had the place to myself.

I was celebrating because business picked up again. My business was dead all summer. There were no school newspapers or other things to print since most of the work I did was seasonal. So I worked for nine months, but for those three summer months, there was no money or business coming in. But starting in the fall and particularly, the first day of school, business picked up again for the year.

It’s interesting going through the newspapers because most have the news of the world, not just school news. There are a lot of movie reviews from new movies of the time – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back to the Future and things like that. The kids loved the movies, by the way. There is national news that the kids were interested in and it’s interesting to see their take on all that and how it played out at the time. Lots of pop culture made it into the newspapers – music, movies, tv – Madonna!

I loved those days. The work was easy and I was in schools around the county almost daily. I would go by to pick up the work and then deliver it after it was printed. I not only handled the newspapers, but we printed year book supplements, literary magazines, sports journals and so many other things. I loved being part of that as it kept me young being in the high schools and junior high schools which became middle schools some time in the middle of all that.

I taught the newspaper classes sometimes – meeting up with classes and explaining the process. I was friendly with most of the teachers and office staff.

The black and white newspapers started experimenting with full color and computers took over the schools and rather than my company doing the typesetting and paste-up, the kids did it all and handed the job in ready to print. So I was there at that interesting time of all the tech changes.

I drive by so many of the schools these days and it brings back so many memories as I drive by. It all comes flooding back.

Back then I had my run of the schools. Toward the end of my doing the newspapers after doing it for so many years, something sad happened. Metal detectors started appearing at the front doors and many of the entrances. I had to show my ID to enter and it was the end of those innocent time.

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Rescued cartoon art

Another great story on CBS Sunday Morning this past week.

Bill Blackbeard, over 30 years, has preserved 2.5 million comic strip artifacts – actual ephemeral newspaper comics sections. I love this, but I do wish he would have saved the whole newspaper of the times! Some go back to 1904.

He drove around the country with his wife and friends, collecting old newspaper comic sections, a lot from libraries who would microfilm the newspapers and then have no future use for them after filming them.

The comics are being featured at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University right now.

Included with the newspapers is the whole original set of 1931 comic art pieces of Blondie – actual drawn pieces of art from the time.

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I wanna quit the newspaper

I got this crazy note from my newspaper carrier. No joke.

I only bring this up now because I see the FTC is trying to make it easier to cancel subscriptions to everything. Right now you have to jump through hoops to cancel any subscription and that’s what happened here.

I called the paper to cancel my subscription and rather than just canceling it, they questioned me as if I was on the stand. Why did I want to cancel? “Well,” I said, “I never really read it.

You don’t read it? “Well no, like today. I didn’t read it.”

Why didn’t you read it today? “Well, to be honest, it wasn’t delivered today and I didn’t even miss it.”

It wasn’t delivered? “Well, no, that happens a lot . . . “

And then on and on, I go . . . “A lot of time it’s left out front where people pick it up off the street, other times, it just doesn’t come. It’s late, it’s this it’s that,” and I go on and on.

At the end of the conversation, I asked them to please not use my name and don’t say anything to the carrier, but of course they did, and I got the above note.

After the subscription was finally stopped, I got non-stop calls from the paper asking me to re-subscribe.

One day I was standing out front, very early in the morning, it was still dark out, I was waiting for an Uber to pick me up to take me to the airport.

Up comes a car, I think it’s Uber. It comes right up to me on the front lawn – right up on the grass. It’s the delivery girl! She has her usual music blasting and she hands me the newspapers for the whole condo, says, “Good morning,” backs up into the street and is off.

Since then I’ve resubscribed, but only to the digital version, not the printed paper. But I forget to read the digital paper and occasionally use it to read the tv listings only. I once read up to seven newspapers a day (no really), now I read none. I can read the comics online, which I do, I can get all the news online from social media, where all the stories are posted and I hate to not support the local papers. So maybe I’ll go back to print, soon.

By the way, about showing this letter to her boss. I know her boss, he lives next door to one of my best friends. I have his number in my phone and if I really had a complaint, I most likely would text him, not go through the subscription service.

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Five cents for the newspaper

Five cents, Ten cents for a newspaper? Of course, years ago, that’s what it was. And not that long ago either. I remember when I was a kid, when I was a paper boy the newspaper was five cents for a daily paper. I delivered the Long Island Press for a few years.

It was five cents a day for the dailies and 30 cents for the Sunday paper – 60 cents for the 7 day week!

This paper from 1969 shows the price of 5 cents, so I guess that was the price for everyone, not just subscribers.

I used to have to “collect,” which is going around and getting paid from customers weekly. I had a little green book, which I think is still at my parents’ house somewhere, and I used to go around the block collecting.

At one point the Sunday paper went up to 35 cents, the dailies were still five cents – so it was 65 cents for the week! Today newspapers are $3.00 for the daily and I’ve seen up to $8.00 for the Sunday paper! They are much less if you subscribe and have it delivered.

Anyway, I went around collecting one time, and one customer yelled at me because the paper went up from 60 cents to 65 cents for the week. He was upset over the nickel. He said no one told him about the rise in price. I just shrugged, but I’m sure the Press put the info on their front page as they usually do, publishing in a box or something to inform readers of the change.

Now you can’t even get a candy bar for 65 cents.

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Wanna feel old?

I went to one of my favorite museums, the Museum of the City of New York. I’m not sure why it’s a favorite, I think it’s the neighborhood I like, Spanish Harlem, as for the museum, it’s the same old exhibits, and once in awhile they change out one room. And their app to buy tickets sucks. Other than that, I did like one exhibit they had today.

But it made me feel ancient. It literally had these things under glass: a dial phone, a pay phone, a newspaper, printed classified ads, film cameras, typewriters, and so much more.

I did enjoy watching a video on the old way newspapers were made and they had a huge old linotype machine and all sorts of old newspaper equipment. That was cool.

But to see these other things behind glass was really freaky.

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