The Ghost Paper
Right now I’m thinking about one of my client papers. The last time I visited this paper, just a few months ago, was the most depressing visit to a newspaper I’ve ever experienced. The editor asked me to come down to the newsroom to meet a high school kid who might want to be a cartoonist when he grew up. The editor was great. I loved meeting her. The ombudsman I met was great, and we all had a nice conversation.
But the newsroom at this major metropolitan paper – this icon – was a ghost town. Row after row of empty cubicles, with maybe four or five people drifting through the empty room while I was there. I tried to imagine everyone was off covering some huge breaking story. Maybe the mayor had just been caught with an underage undocumented immigrant planting bombs in the reservoir, and the paper needed to cover it from dozens of different angles. It made the echoes and the silence of the cavernous and dimly-lit newsroom a little easier to take.
While I was talking to the high school kid, I couldn’t help but think back to almost a decade earlier, when I’d been invited to that same newspaper to meet its editorial cartoonist. I was just a couple years older than this kid I was talking to. Back then I was worried about getting in everyone’s way because the newsroom was overflowing with intensely focused people rushing back and forth, people in ties and suspenders or in pearls and earrings holding animated conversations with each other or with their cell phones, phones ringing, doors opening and closing, and faxes coming through…
In the few short months since I met the high school kid, my friend at the paper (who’d also been my editor back when I freelanced editorial cartoons) was let go.
Something tells me the bar at the National Cartoonists Society convention is going to be packed this year. I’ll have to bring money, though, because I’m told this year they can’t afford an open bar.
The $30 offer is an excellent deal for your fans. I think you still need some kind of levels for the occasional moments of personal extravagance and/or gifting occasions. I think one of the challenges of selling your prints is that a lot of us have so many favorites. Patrick McDonnell sold signed, numbered Mutts prints of a couple of strips at a time.. Hugh McLeod (http://www.gapingvoid.com/) had been doing art on business cards for years but recently started selling large versions of select bizcard art. He seems to be selling some. Maybe if you featured a strip or two at a time.
I remember the issues with the postal services. I don’t know what you or I did to anger the postal gods. They were not entirely kind with the inaugural print either. I have no suggestion about how to deal with that.
The different levels confused too many people, so it’s back to the drawing board. And thanks to my local post office about 1/4 of the membership packages I sent out never got to the members. A couple came back mangled, so I have a good idea what happened to the rest. I sent new stuff to members who told me they didn’t get theirs.
I’m thinking of sending signed sketches and one signed print of any daily strip to anyone who
subscribes for a year or to anyone who donates $30 or
more. Does that sound interesting? If not, I’m open to suggestions.
What’s the new arrangement with the Donate and Subscribe buttons? You used to have donor levels. Of course, I was bad and signed up one year and then didn’t pay again. Does membership still have its privileges?
It’s really sad about the newspaper biz (well – anything in print). I had a similar experience, so I know the feeling. Just 10 years ago it was TOTALLY different. Who would of thought? I can honestly say I never felt it coming (the demise of printed materials). I guess I’ve been naiive to the fact that EVERYTHING is online for free – and so that would sway people away from buying things on print. I should’ve saw it coming (sigh)
I’ve updated the donation & subscription links. They’re on the right side right under the strip. Thanks again for asking!
Thanks! And thanks for reminding me I need to update that button (you’re not even close to being the only one who didn’t notice it). Going to work on that now. I think I’ll also change the Paypal buttons’ code, so I’ll post a new entry when that’s done.
Ok, silly me! You are subtle and I didn’t notice that Lamont’s cap was the paypal button. o.O
I do believe we live in the same major metro area, so I will read between the lines here and make a leap that you went downtown to a lovely old art deco building that is now eviscerated of people the same way the same said newspaper is eviscerated of stories everyday. It breaks my heart every time I pick up the LA Times, as it is a ghost, a mere wisp of the paper it was 10 years or even 15.
Given how crappy it is gotten, is why I now have all my fave cartoons on RSS in worry that one day I will open the paper and y’all will be gone.
Have you considered putting up a paypal subscription button? I would be more than willing to subscribe and contribute via paypal every month.