A bitch about "Straight Dope" column logistics

[teela brown]

Sheez Louise, do you think Unca Cece's column could be placed somwhere other than in the prostitute ads in my weekly rag? Maybe everyone else isn't bothered by it, but I'm a middle-aged married legal secretary. It's kind of embarrassing to sit in our lunchroom and open the paper to the "Great Oral Phone Sex!" (in highly legible 2" print) ad pages in order to read the new SD.

And another thing - my dumbass weekly paper has shrunk the Straight Dope column from a full page item to a scant half-page, if that. Slug's cartoons are barely more than postage-stamp sized, and I need an electron microscope to read the text. Now, I know that I can just wait for everything to be online, but I wanna read SD as soon as possible, and it's out in the paper (at least in San Jose) before it's online. I'm sure that shrinking the article was done just to squeeze in more "XXX Dancer for Bachelor Parties" ads.

Idiot paper. And their restaurant reviews suck, too.

[Ukulele Ike]

Count your blessings. Russ Smith, the reactionary little wiener dog who publishes the NEW YORK PRESS, dropped Cecil Adams completely a couple of months ago, which leaves Da Greatest City in Da Woild with no Straight Dope at all.

Looks like Smith wouldn't cough up the nominal sum required to continue syndication. Pissant.

Anyway, he always stuck Cece back amongst the transvestite blowjob adverts in the back of his filthy little rag, too. Very embarrassing to read on the subway, unless you folded everything over into mass-market paperback rack size.

Ed Zotti, the lazy layabout, should be bombarding the VILLAGE VOICE with tempting offers and enticing tales of increased readership once The Straight Dope starts running in its august pages. And there's always that new newspaper, the NEW YORK SUN, which is supposed to start publishing in a coupla weeks.

[Arnold Winkelried]

You've inspired me! Next week I will set pen to paper and write a stern letter to my local alternative news source and demand that they include The Straight Dope. If they can print Commie Girl's column, why not Cecil?

[KneadToKnow]

It's like a variation on the old joke:

pugluvr: This is an idiot paper ... and the print is so small!

[Reeder]

At least y'all get it in print.

We have to read it on the net.

And we don't even get the prostitute ads!

[Polycarp]

It appears that the Spectator, the Research Triangle area weekly alternative newspaper owned and published by Creative Loafing of Atlanta(?), has also dropped the Straight Dope.

Ed, for the benefit of Cecil's fans, can you comment on what's going on with these papers, and any marketing you're doing -- and perhaps where we can help foster the latter?

[MilTan]

Aww, crap... I hadn't realized that the Spectator had dropped the Straight Dope. I was about to post a nice little "nyah!" message pointing out that not only did we in Raleigh get the Straight Dope, we didn't have to leaf through porn ads to read it.

Now there's nothing going for the Spectator over the Independent

[Skerri]

Hee hee hee! We get the SD in the Charleston City Paper and we've had it for quite some time. Alas, it's a 1/2 page kind of thing, but at least it's not squared up next to the porn ads.

It's been in the City Paper ever since it was known as the Upwith Herald, which would have been about 5 or 7 years ago.