Doonesbury | Doonesbury's Blowback
"What happens to comics if newspapers go away?" a Twitter user asks Zonker in a Feb. 2 Doonesbury strip. Two blank panels follow. "Feel how empty your life became?" Zonker asks. "Stick with print, folks, this doesn't have to happen," Mike Doonesbury replies.

The strip has kicked off a meme among producers of Web comics, who are inserting art from their own work in the blank space: (more...)

Washington Post
“Doonesbury” creator Garry Trudeau confirms to Michael Cavna that Roland Hedley’s readings from a Sarah Palin tell-all were indeed actual excerpts from Joe McGinniss’s forthcoming bio, ”The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin.” Cavna points out that newspaper editors across America knew that Trudeau was going to write in his strip that Palin and ex-NBA star Glen Rice “once had a romantic encounter," but the journalists kept quiet because of an embargo. (Meanwhile, the National Enquirer beat them on the story.) "As silly as it may sound," writes Cavna, "you -- as a subscribing comic-feature client -- are expected to respect an embargo on such information, whether you care one whit about the salacious/irrelevant/enlightening/boring tale or not."

A Chicago Tribune editor was apparently referring to today's Palin-Rice strip when he said earlier this week that "the storyline begins slowly, but as the week progresses, the remarks become increasingly serious." || Read Janet Maslin's NYT review of McGinniss's book, and The Daily Beast's "6 juiciest leaks" from it.
> Earlier: Miami Herald staffers debate posting of Palin-Rice tryst story

Romenesko+ Misc. | Washington Post
I asked, and got this response from Scott Stantis:

As you might guess I am torn. On the one hand I understand their reasoning. They did the same thing to my comic strip Prickly City a few years back in a series on Ted Kennedy. This was before I was on staff here. So this is not a new policy aimed squarely at liberal comic strips as has been suggested.

On the other hand, it ticked me off when it happened to me. As a creator you never want your work stiflied. You know that.

"Editors, of course, have the right not to run a cartoon," writes Michael Cavna. "But to that I would append: Cartoonists who editorialize, of course, have the responsibility not to be fair." He reports that Newsday and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also chose not to run this week's "Doonesbury" with excerpts from Joe McGinniss's book about Sarah Palin. || Creative Loafing: The Journal-Constitution cites "strong political content" as its reason for killing the strips. (more...)

Washington Post
"Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau is running excerpts from Joe McGinniss’s Sarah Palin's bio in this week's strips, which won't be seen by Chicago Tribune print edition readers. The paper says in an A2 note that "the subject matter does not meet our standards of fairness [because] the strips include excerpts from a book that is not yet on the market and therefore unavailable for review or verification by the Tribune." The book's release date is Sept. 20. The Tribune is running "Thatababy" in the place of "Doonesbury."