* Interesting how the two dailies are dealing with the Doonesbury comic strip. Creator Gary Trudeau is taking time off to concentrate on writing and producing Alpha House, an Amazon Instant Video comedy. That means Sunday-only strips. The weekday ones will be reruns.
The Tampa Bay Times will continue Sundays and run the weekday retrospective dating back to the 1970s. The Tampa Tribune will stay with Sundays but will not pick up the reruns. Instead, it is introducing a new strip, Rhymes With Orange, by Hilary B. Price.
Neither, however, will consider moving Doonesbury to the editorial page, where it really belongs.
* We’ve been lampooned as “Flori-duh” and the “Gunshine State.” Hanging chads, outrageously long voter lines, fluoride rejections, 1.1 million conceal-and-carry licenses and high-profile, “Stand Your Ground”-associated trials will do it. Now add “Fake or Florida?”, a parody game show on Late Night with Seth Meyers. It would appear that the piling on will continue as long as the material keeps coming.
*Schadenfreude front page: The Trib’s lengthy, below-the-fold piece on the financial strains of the Tampa Bay Times organization.