The Sad State of Daily Comics

I made the mistake of going to one of the major Daily Comic syndicates where you can read the Dailies if you don't get a newspaper.  There is one comic that I still like to follow that is not carried in my daily paper. (Yes, I still get an actual, physical daily paper.) As I follow a Facebook group dedicated to that one particular strip, I can usually read that one daily comic as I doom scroll Facebook and don't have to go to the actual Comics syndicate website to look up that one comic. 

A little back story about myself: I was a cartoonist in a former life. I had a weekly and then daily strip for a few years that started in the college newspaper and got picked up by a small conglomerate of about 10 Southern newspapers back in the late 1990s. I was actually getting a little traction and then a national paper (I think it was USA Today but don't recall exactly whom it was now a quarter century later) came in and bought up that newspaper group and immediately came in and fired all the local freelance talent like writers and cartoonists like myself. They tried using their national canned news items and whatnot, which went over like a lead balloon. I think all but two of those local papers folded within five years or so. In fact, I think only one of those papers still exists in any form, and it's basically become a weekend rag under a different name.

Two of the critical errors that Big Newspaper made over the last 30 years that has basically all but led traditional newspapers to collapse. There are a few newspapers that still make a go of it, largely with digital online subscriptions. Even with that, the ones that remain are mostly hemorrhaging money dinosaurs that will likely be completely gone in 10 years. 

The first error was never getting a handle on the power of the internet. Newspapers were ridiculously slow to embrace the internet at all. When they finally did, it was the wrong approach because most newspapers made all their articles available online for free. That was all well and good as long as traditional subscriptions were continuing to roll in. When the next generation of people who don't remember life before the internet became adults, newspapers became very antiquated very quickly because they offered for a fee basically any news item that you could get for free online. As the money streams dried up, newspaper began putting their stuff behind a paywall. They should have probably taken this approach from the beginning because people got used to free news and the idea of paying for a digital subscription does not sit well with the under 45 crowd because they now feel entitled for free stuff. 

The other major mistake that Big Newspaper made was cutting local talent, particularly freelancers. Freelancers were a great way to offer something unique that big news conglomerates could not offer. A regional freelance editorial writer that might develop a readership in, say, North Carolina, might not appeal to readers in Oregon or Nebraska. A One-Size-Fits-All newspaper filled with aggregate news you could read in any national TV news website only goes so far if you want people to pay for a membership. You have to offer something unique if you want people to pay for it with their hard earned cash. 

This is, ironically, something that Social Media personalities and platforms picked up on immediately. Create original content people actually want to read and people are more than happy to give you $5 or $10 a month through online giving platforms like Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee, or even degenerate websites like OnlyFans. Say what you will about any of those types of platforms, but they understand the purchasing power of ordinary people. If you provide something people want to watch or read, and offer it for a reasonable price, and you have the marketing talent, you can make a go of it as an "influencer" or Social Media presence. 

Newspapers never figured this out until it was way too late, if they ever did at all. They only ever offered a one-size-fits-all subscription because they still like to pretend that its 1938 and newspapers were the only sort of news readily available to most people. Radio was becoming a thing, but there might be news updates or ever an evening news broadcast, but Big Newspaper was king and artiber of all things news and print media.   

One of things that I have said since I got my pink slip from the newspaper conglomerate that my comic strip was to be discontinued was that this trend was the beginning of the end for newspapers, but they did not know it at the time. They thought people only bought newspapers for national news and maybe the sales circulars found therein. They did not realize how many people actually bought a newspaper not for the political news but for local sports and, primarily, the comics. I can't tell you how many times my father would get his newspaper first thing in the morning and turn to 1. the Comics page, and then 2. the Sports section, and then read the other news and political editorial slop. It was specifically in that order. 

My father had a daily subscription for years and years. The news was canned. The local sports coverage was basically non-existent. And yet he continued to get a subscription. He finally kicked the habit (he spoke of cancelling his newspaper subscription like he was giving up cigarettes) of subscribing to my local hometown paper when they finally stopped carrying the comics he liked. That was a bridge too far. I remember him going on a rant about how, "They stopped running Arlo 'n Janis and Curtis and put in Garfield, which hasn't been funny in years...Even the artwork is now garbage."

I've known this for years, of course, but I didn't realize how bad it truly has gotten. My local county newspaper still runs a few of the comics that are still funny like Pickles and Baby Blues, so I don't complain too much. Yes, they still run Garfield, Family Circus, and other ghastly abominations, but there are still a few righteous among the gentiles comics miraculously. I call Comics like this zombie comics: at one point they were living and vital but they died years ago and no one told them. (I am pretty sure they must keep Jim Davis' stuffed body in a closet somewhere and run Garfield on automation.)

As I surveyed the wasteland of gocomics.com yesterday, I truly was aghast at how badly drawn and unfunny most of the comics were. Some even appeared to have been drawn by AI. I am sure virtually none of them were drawn with pen and paper anymore. So many had all the artwork depth of South Park animation. I am sure they were all "drawn" on computers with digital art or AI outright. It was all very bland. All had precisely 3 panels or 1 panel. No experimentation in the art. I read through them all, and not a one garners so much as a smirk or a "Wow, look at that artwork."

Compare that slop to some of these Sunday comics from 1942: 

I would pay a subscription for a paper than ran comics like this. Why can't we do this anymore? Does anyone even know how to do actual comics anymore, or has AI and the Computer made up incapable of doing art outside the 3 panel strip?  I sometimes think Western civilization peaked long ago, and we are living the dregs of post-modernity.