"The cutback in cartoons has less to do with the budget than it does with page counts going down," Kevin Allman tells "Idiot Box" cartoonist Matt Bors. "What you see as $25 for a cartoon, the publishers see as potential ad space that could sell for 10x that amount." Allman says that in New Orleans, they ended up sticking with local cartoonists rather than nationally syndicated ones. "Their drawings are the equivalent of local news stories," he says. "And I try to treat them with as much respect as I do the columnists, but they have to suffer too with the smaller page layouts."

Continue ReadingGambit Weekly Editor Chats About the State of Alt-Weekly Cartoons

"Call me a pessimist, but I think relying on alternative weekly papers to sustain alternative comics after this week is a dream," says "Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles" cartoonist Neil Swaab. He lays out three ways forward for working alt-cartoonists: a subscription-based model, more interactivity, and donations. UPDATE (Feb. 3, 1 pm): Swaab has removed the post due to what many saw as disparaging comments about web-based comic artists.

Continue ReadingAlt-Cartoonist Says the ‘End Of Alternative Comic Strips’ May Be Here

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) says that unique monthly visitors reached a record of 67.3 million in 2008 -- up 12.1 percent over 60 million in 2007. But as Media Daily News reports, the big increases in traffic simply are not translating into increased online revenues. Fourth-quarter figures are not yet available from the NAA, but online revenues slumped 2.4 percent in the second quarter and 3 percent in the third.

Continue ReadingNewspaper Web Audience Grows, Revenues Decline

Lloyd Dangle reports that The Stranger and Metro Silicon Valley have cut his "Troubletown" cartoon. "[The papers] said that they might bring Troubletown back when things get better," Dangle writes, "but for newspapers, I don't know anybody who thinks it's going to get better." Meanwhile, Max Cannon of "Red Meat" has posted "an urgent message" on his website, saying "the alternative comics apocalypse has begun."

Continue ReadingAnother Cartoonist is Dropped by Alt-Weekly Clients

The free daily tabloid that launched in Baltimore in 2006 will deliver its last issue Feb. 15, Baltimore City Paper reports. Examiner parent company Clarity Media Group reportedly wanted to focus its East Coast efforts on its Washington, D.C., edition and was looking for someone to buy the Baltimore edition. But when the search came up empty, the company made the decision to close up shop.

Continue ReadingBaltimore Examiner to Close

The California Air Resources Board backed away last Friday from strict new regulations that would have put Berkeley startup 3 Prong Power out of business and dealt a severe blow to the nascent plug-in hybrid industry, the Express reports. 3 Prong president Daniel Sherwood credited an Express cover story published a little more than a week before the air resources board meeting with helping save the rapidly-growing industry. After the story came out, the board received more than 130 comments on the proposed strict new rules, the vast majority of which were opposed to them.

Continue ReadingEast Bay Express Article Helps Save the Plug-In Hybrid Industry

In the old days, when the media reported on problems in the newspaper industry, alternative newspapers weren't included. But alt-weeklies are immune no longer: In 2008, many AAN papers faced some of the same issues afflicting their mainstream brethren in the print media. However, you can still find alt-weeklies that had a pretty good year in 2008. That's just what AAN's editor Jon Whiten did, and he reports on 10 papers that increased revenue in a story published by Editor & Publisher.

Continue ReadingTen AAN Members That Bucked the Trends and Grew in ’08