Ed Stein, the editorial cartoonist at Rocky Mountain News, has decided to end his Denver Square strip on May 21. The strip is one of the few of this era's remaining local-only newspaper strips. Local-only newspaper strips have been brought back into the media spotlight in recent months because of the passing of San Francisco cartoonist Phil Frank of the long-running San Francisco Chronicle strip Farley and the successful launch of Washington Post Sunday Magazine feature Cul De Sac as a daily. Denver Square was launched in 1997.
Local market comic strips have become a more compelling idea as the newspaper industry has changed in the last 10 years with an aging readership and massive competition on-line. On the one hand, they have potential to offer newspapers unique local content of a kind that can be highly appealing and play in both print and on-line formats. On the other, the economics of profitable strip-making have for decades depended on wide distribution through multiple outlets paying a small fee as opposed to one entity shouldering the entire cost.
