Monday, May 27, 2024
Jeffrey Lindenblatt's Paper Trends: The 300 for 2000 -- Rookies of 1999
How times have changed in a decade. Back in the late 1980s we had the beginning of the influx of strips that feature African American characters in leading roles. Those strips were Curtis, Jump Start and Herb and Jamaal. The best any of these strips could muster was 8 client papers in their rookie years. Now in 1999 we have the introduction of the ‘black’ strip Boondocks by Aaron McGruder debuting with 23 papers to become the Top Rookie strip for 1999. The Boondocks had already been in print for two years in the monthly hip hop magazine The Source, so it already had a bit of a track record. This is yet another attempt by feature editors to get a young and hip audience to read the daily newspaper.
There were more strong debuts this year from all of the top five rookies. Our top five represent an impressive 69 spots going to new features. Here are all the rest of the rookies:
Grand Avenue – 14
Get Fuzzy – 13
Lola - 10
Agnes – 9
That’s Life – 4
Bobo’s Progress – 2
Big Picture, Cats With Hands, Do Not Disturb (local), Ffarm.com, Flight Deck, Meehan Streak, Pooch Café (debuted in the first week of 2000 so not technically a rookie yet), Raising Hector (ditto), Top Secrets (local), Zorro – 1
Labels: Paper Trends
