Posted on: Sunday, January 13, 2002

AFTER DEADLINE
We lose comics at our peril

By John Simonds

Readers have different tastes when it comes to comics, but they're likely to agree it's no laughing matter when their paper arrives without them.

That's what happened Tuesday to about 110,000 copies of The Advertiser that had two E6 pages with TV grids but no E8, where the daily cartoon strips were supposed to be.

Correcting the spelling of a name on Page E6 led to stopping the press Monday afternoon to replate the page. Press operators inadvertently put the new E6 on the cylinder in place of E8. So the comics were bumped and both versions of E6 were printed.

The standard practice of press operators checking pages as they come off the press failed to detect the two TV pages and the missing comics. Because it was an early-run section, it could not be changed and was inserted in Tuesday morning and afternoon editions. About a third of Tuesday's papers had the comic page, but most did not.

Readers phoned in responses — ranging from amused to angry — to the missing funnies. Some callers speculated the mistake occurred late at night when quality-control people were off duty, but it happened Monday afternoon.

The Advertiser noted the production error in a front page explanation in Tuesday's PM and all Wednesday editions. The newspaper published two facing pages of comics on Wednesday, one page including the missing Tuesday strips.

It's a mistake that rarely happens, because of the page-checking during press runs every day, but when it does, it's a memorable glitch. Even readers who raise taste questions about certain cartoons ("Quigmans" and "I Need Help," for example) seem to welcome the comics as a collective feature.

For readers of other sections, a variety of concerns have surfaced.

• A Page One story Wednesday said the painkiller drug OxyContin was available on the street in far larger-dosage tablets than its actual 80-milligram strength. Readers with apparent product knowledge spotted the error and called in time for it to be fixed in the PM edition.

• A Wednesday Island Life feature "Geek chic," about the "emo" lifestyle drew comments from readers who said it was not a new style and questioned The Advertiser's focusing attention on it. Island Life people said they're aware some youth lifestyle activists may not appreciate publicity. Elizabeth Kieszkowski, features editor, said the emo style is comparatively new to Hawai'i, though it has been around elsewhere for some time. A major music industry magazine featured emo in recent coverage.

• The fuel cell is a promising unit of energy-producing capability under development in a Kaka'ako warehouse. It was the topic of a Wednesday article and a Thursday editorial. Understood by the scientific world, it could use more explanation for other readers. One complained that even with a diagram to show how a cell works, reporting has not made clear how big cells are and how they will benefit the world. Sizes of cells are said to vary from some that fit inside a car to others the size of a car. Results could reduce dependency on fossil fuels as well as pollution.

• A home-team parent questioned points credited to players in a prep basketball game. He kept score himself and had different numbers. The box score provided to The Advertiser by scorers for the home team was neat and easy to read but somehow put the point totals next to the wrong names. The situation shows how dependent sports pages — and players' families — are on school scorers.

• The first baby in the United States in 2002 was born to parents on Guam, an Advertiser story and photo reported on Jan. 2. A challenging e-mailer asked how Guam had become a state, but its status as a U.S. territory, say Advertiser editors, enables Guam to claim the nation's first birth of the year.

Reach John Simonds at jsimonds@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8033.