Excuse the Interruption…

I know, I know. The rest of May was supposed to be posts related to Asian-American cartoonists. But I have to horn in here for just a moment to put on the record that I most emphatically DO NOT believe that newspaper readers are senile! Why? Well, I’ll try to keep it short…

A very nice reporter with the Rock Hill (SC) Herald called me for some bon mots about comic strips, and of course I was happy to comply. In the reporter’s article, which you can find here, I am recorded as saying that the newspaper audience is becoming senile.

I was, in fact, talking about the aging newspaper audience, and it is possible that in a lighthearted moment I jestingly made some mention of senility, though I do not recall having done so. But if I did, it was obviously made with tongue firmly in cheek, and obviously should not have been quoted as if I were, in all earnestness, contending that newspaper readers are suffering from dementia.

I realize that reporters have relentless deadlines, and I sympathize that they are underpaid and overworked. I have just enough experience dealing with reporters to know that if you get quoted precisely, and in context, you should consider it a small miracle. So I haven’t complained to the reporter or the newspaper about the article, which quotes me extensively and in most cases, incorrectly. I just wanted to go on record here, just in case someone reads the article and comes to visit the blog thinking I’m a raving lunatic, that I do not think that newspaper readers (a group of which I am a proud member) are a group of doddering old fools. We may be old, but we are better informed than most of the public, who get what they laughingly call news from TV. 

2 comments on “Excuse the Interruption…

  1. Well, you might not be a doddering old fool but then you're younger than I am.

    Anyway…
    I don't think it was that article but somewhere/something else I read with your name attached that made me look up:
    http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=2133963
    8.5 x 11. 624 pgs. 3100 color illustrations.
    Cloth plus CD
    978-0-472-11756-7
    $150.00S Forthcoming

    Hey! An ISBN!
    Can you give us any hints on how
    "forthcoming it is?

    D.D.Degg

  2. Thanks for asking, DD. I'm being told by the publisher that the book will finally be off the presses sometime this summer, perhaps as early as June. Stay tuned for updates!

    –Allan

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