THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501080065
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
SOURCE: Cole C. Campbell, Editor
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Sure, Marilyn Monroe is getting most of the attention.
But the ``Legends of Hollywood'' postage stamps aren't the only commemorative series planned for 1995.
The U.S. Postal Service also will honor comic strips. The cartoon stamps will be unveiled May 4, the 100th birthday of the Yellow Kid, narrator of the country's first comic strip, ``Hogan's Alley.''
The Yellow Kid was named for the yellow ink applied to his nightshirt. He played a major role in the late 19th-century New York newspaper wars between Joseph Pulitzer, whose fortune endowed the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism and literature, and William Randolph Hearst, whose ambition inspired the movie classic ``Citizen Kane.''
These press barons used comic strips and sensationalized stories to win new immigrants as readers. In building huge-circulation newspapers, they created the country's first mass medium.
Their more outlandish tactics came to be known - because of the association with the first comics - as ``yellow journalism.''
Some argue that yellow journalism still shapes newspapering today. That's grist for a later notebook.
Comics certainly continue to fill an essential role in most newspapers. And the most popular strip still spotlights a kid - the tousled-haired, self-absorbed protagonist of ``Calvin and Hobbs.''
Whenever newspapers alter their comics pages, editors prepare for some unpleasantness. Readers are sticklers about favorite strips and don't want to see them slighted in a shuffle.
Today's paper combines what used to be two four-page Sunday comics sections into one six-page section.
The good news is that it will be a lot easier to grab the comics; you won't have to keep searching for the other section.
And we haven't lost any comics in the merger. (The ``Far Side'' is gone, because cartoonist Gary Larson retired.) But we've trimmed the size of some to accommodate the change.
We are consolidating the comics to conserve the paper we print on. In 1995, newsprint prices will average 29.5 percent more than in 1994. Newsprint is the second-highest cost in bringing you this newspaper - second only to the payroll for everyone involved in producing and distributing it.
Newsprint's fluctuating cost illustrates the basic economics of supply and demand.
When newsprint brings top dollar, paper plants expand their production capacity. When capacity increases, so does supply, gradually driving the price down. When the price drops, plants reduce capacity, and eventually prices rise again.
Fortunately, during the recent recession, prices were low.
Now that prices are rising, Publisher Frank Batten Jr. and other executives at Landmark Communications Inc., our corporate parent, have urged us to be frugal in how we use newsprint.
But they also have declared that we will not simply pass the price increases on to our customers and we will not substantially cut the space in the newspaper devoted to stories, photographs and graphics.
Instead, we will improve our internal production processes to eliminate waste, avoid using extra pages when the news doesn't warrant it and consolidate wherever it will have minimum effect - such as in putting all the Sunday comics in one section. That single step will will slice more than $100,000 from the newsprint bill for the year.
Meanwhile, we're still examining ways to add valuable news and information to the paper.
We're even considering some new comic strips.
Don't worry: Any new ones won't replace any you now get.
We've learned a thing or two over the past 100 years. ILLUSTRATION: The Yellow Kid, above, narrated the country's first comic strip,
``Hogan's Alley.'' Calvin, below, is the star of the most the most
popular strip today, ``Calvin and Hobbes.''
by CNB