News: Doonesbury Drop From Papers Incites Controversy posted July 22, 2004
July 22 -- Garry Trudeau spoke out in public against a controversial vote by a group of Southeast papers to drop his Doonesbury strip from 38 comics sections. The papers carry a Sunday section produced by Continental Features. The president of that company informally polled his clients to see if they wanted Trudeau's long running and much lauded strip, which has been very outspoken in its criticism of current presidential administration policies, from the section. The vote was 21 to 15 against keeping the strip.
In a statement to the newspaper trade magazine Editor and Publisher, Trudeau made the case that the strip was singled out to begin with because of the views of the company president, was dropped from the other 15 papers that wanted to keep it, and generally didn't reflect the views of individual readers and editors over a period of time, as is usually the case with such decisions. Trudeau's syndicate indicated bafflement that the desires of the newspaper editors not to have the strip outweighed the advantages of keeping the newly-reinvigorated feature, which has been featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and has generated a great deal of press coverage in this election year.