The Doonesbury debacle

It's still bothering me that many newspapers that run the Doonesbury strip censored it this week out of fear of the potential backlash over the storyline. For those unaware, this week's arc is about a woman in Texas visiting a health care center.

Presumably, the character is seeking an abortion and is confronted with that state's (in my opinion fascist) requirement of having to first view an ultrasound image of her womb. Newspapers who carry the strip are concerned over so-called "graphic" content, although so far, as of day two, I've yet to see it. Some are not running it all. Others, such as my local daily, which is part of the company I work for, found a compromise in which it's publishing this week's strip on its website.

I honestly can't say if that compromise is a Solomon-like decision or a purely opportunistic attempt to drive traffic to its website. Or somewhere in between.

Admittedly, it's easy for me to judge since I wasn't confronted with the decision myself and I do believe the editor and publisher of that paper didn't make it lightly. It's likely that some of the discussion had to include the fact that the majority of the paper's audience is extremely conservative (don't forget, South Carolina voted for Newt Gingrich in the Presidential primary) and running what they would perceive as offensive content is counter intuitive at a time when all newspapers are struggling to retain enough audience to remain viable.

It's pretty much certain that running the strip in print this week would have cost the paper advertisers and I'm pragmatic enough to realize that is something to be avoided.

This makes me nostalgic for the "good old days" when newspapers could afford to let an advertiser walk if it came down to that or self censorship. I recall a chapter in a book chronicling the history of Newsday, a Pulitzer-winning paper on Long Island. The publisher at the time told one of its biggest advertisers, Macy's I think, that he'd rather the company not advertise at all as opposed to advertising less frequently than it had the year before.

In the end, Macy's (I think) decided to renew its 52-week contract.

The company needed the paper's audience that much.

That's still the case today. It's just that some companies forgot that because of the bells and whistles of electronic media (which we're a part of now of course) and some of these really crappy local "magazines" that look pretty, but offer warmed over press releases and genuinely vacuous content and super cheap ad rates.

I want to climb up on my high horse and say I'd always side with free speech when it comes to a potentially inflammatory comic strip, but I can't say I don't understand why some papers would pull it. At the same time, I think if you can't stand behind a longtime, Pulitzer-winning content provider like Gary Trudeau (who I admit has been a favorite of mine for nearly 40 years), then you should just not run it at all.