Several people have written to inquire about the possibility of reader subscriptions or sponsorships, and I appreciate the thought and will look into it. But this isn’t only about the lost income — I can survive that hit, at least until things get even worse. It’s also about losing the readership, everybody who’s used to picking up these papers to see the cartoon each week. I mean, christ, look at that list — Dallas, Ft. Lauderdale, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, Orange County, Kansas City, Denver, Seattle, New York. (On top of which I lost the VVM paper in St. Louis earlier in the year, again due to budgetary cutbacks.) That’s a lot of cities!
The irony is, I deliberately set out at the beginning of my career to make sure my eggs were in a lot of different baskets, so no one person could do me this kind of damage. What I didn’t count on was the baskets themselves deciding to merge — i.e., the consolidation of the paper chains. And isn’t that working out well for all concerned.