Help Get RETAIL Reinstated to the Cedar Rapids Gazette
By Norm on February 9th, 2010Posted In: Blog
Recently, the Cedar Rapids Gazette dropped “Retail” from both their daily and Sunday comics line-up to “give a new comic a chance”. So of course they had to cut my 4-year-old strip and let the 50-year-old clunkers stay.
Many people have already complained about the change, but I would appreciate any and all help I can get to have “Retail” reinstated in Cedar Rapids. Please follow the link below to the Gazette’s website and let your opinion be heard either in their blog, or through the “contact us” link at the top right of the same page.
Any help you can give me is appreciated. All I ask is that you be civil in your discourse.
Thank you.
-Norm-
What other comics do they currently have (i.e. the 50 yr old clunkers) that they are keeping instead? If Mother Goose and Grimm is one that’s plain retarded that ran out of material like a decade ago and comes up with the lamest stupidest strips besides those random not character related strips .
That reminds me. Last year The New Britain Herald of New Britain, Connecticut dropped Retail and another comic strip that I used to enjoy. I’m happy that I can read Retail daily on the Seattle P-I website. I had to do that on Sundays anyway as The New Britain Herald never carried Retail on Sundays.
London, Ontario’s London Free Press dropped Retail last year as well. I also use Seattle PI’s website to get my daily fix. Don’t know what I’d do with out Retail…. especially since Gill left us.
See guys, not to be rude, but this is the heart of the problem. When your paper drops a strip you like and you don’t fight to get it back but just go find it somewhere on the web instead, you are essentially dooming the strip. Web revenues for comic strips are currently next to nothing – especially any site you see the strip on for free.
Syndicated comic strips succeed on the number of print papers they are in. Period. If you don’t fight for Retail, you won’t have that daily fix.
And you thought you missed Gill.
i didnt say anything about fighting. the editorials for months were all blasting the paper for the changes. do they do anything? no! they just keep cutting out the good comics and putting in crap, and reducing the overall amount. So when the only place that has retail is on the web , im def going to check it out over no retail / gill. savee?
You have a good point Anne, but so does Pete.
Trolling through the Cedar Rapids site I found that the change caused “quite a stir” far before I even knew about it. So it’s not like people aren’t complaining. It’s just that so far, the paper isn’t listening.
And I really have nothing against “Dustin”. I just don’t see why they wouldn’t ditch Beetle Bailey or some other ancient strip instead. It’s just such backwards thinking. The older readers aren’t going to cancel their subscription over a comic because that’s the primary place they get their news. Younger readers on the other hand are going to lose interest if the content doesn’t appeal to them and go to the web.
Pete, I wasn’t trying to single you out or get you to stop reading Retail on the web. I was just trying to make the point that papers need to hear directly from their readers when they are unhappy about content. I myself have been guilty of taking my business to another restaurant after receiving bad service without taking the time to let the manager know I got bad service. He can’t correct the problem if he doesn’t know it exists. I couldn’t tell from your post if you had contacted your paper or not and I was trying to point out that that should always be the first response when a strip you like goes away.
It looks as though, in this particular case, readers are making their complaints quite loudly and, as Norm said, the paper isn’t listening. Which is pretty stupid. You’d think they need every reader they can get.
I used to work at the Iowa City Wal-Mart. Reading Retail in the Gazette while on break was one of the few pleasures I had during working hours. And I wasn’t alone; managers clipped out choice strips and pasted them on the bulletin boards and SKU books.
I am one of those people that complained to the CR Gazette. I’ve been a daily subscriber for over 20 years and have dropped my subscription over the editors replacing Retail with Dustin. Last year they replaced Pearls and it was brought back after 6 weeks because of reader protests. The Gazette does annual reader polls on their strips and Retail always preformed well so I can only imagine it has come down to an issue of cost. The Gazette used to focus on most of SE Iowa and since the restructuring this past year it’s main focus is Ceader Radips and national news (most of which are wire stories that can be read hours before on the web) . After several weeks of complaints by it’s readers the Gazette editors continued to justify their decision by saying they needed to give a new strip a chance blah blah blah… it was evident they have no intention of listening to the readers. It’s no wonder newspapers are dying. Norm keep up the excellent work . My sister and mother work retail and they say your work hits the mark. Thanks for the laughs and we’ll have to look for your work on the web or in book form !