DTWOF: The Blog

Browsing the website for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, I found this interesting story from Wired magazine about the decline of newspapers. Wired's Adam Penenberg references a focus group conducted by the Washington Post in September. Participants, all of them 18-34, said they wouldn't accept a Post subscription even if it were free. Why? Penenbeg says, "The main reason (and I'm not making this up): They didn't like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses." The Post, fyi, is losing 4000 paid subscribers a month. The article goes on to say that these younger readers are consuming news via the Internet, by visiting blogs and using news aggregators and other filters to digest news. Now, obviously Alison and other indie cartoonists aren't relying on papers like the Post for their livelihood, but they are relying on glbt papers and alternative weeklies, who pay to feature comics. I wonder how this trend is effecting those alternative news sources, and how it will effect indie cartoonists like Alison. All of which leads me to ask where all of you read DTWOF. Do you flip through a gay paper? An alt. weekly? Do you find the strip on-line? Wait until the books come out? Where's the ideal place to read a lively, engaging comic strip, particularly this one?

Last Thursday, Alison attended an Art Spiegelman lecture at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Burlington's excellent alternative weekly Seven Days commissioned her to draw a comic about the event.

In case you missed it, here's a link to a story in The Advocate about Melissa Etheridge's battle with breast cancer. Alison is quoted because, as alert readers know, Mo's partner Sydney was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is now recovering after a lumpectomy, chemo and radiation. Roughly 216,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004. FYI, The Mautner Project in D.C. is a great clearinghouse for lesbian-specific information about breast cancer. Update: The above link has been fixed and is now correct. Thanks!

A number of readers have requested that we activate an RSS feed, and I think I've finally figured it out, with help from Jessamyn, the local radical, anti-capitalist librarian blogger. Try this out, see if it works. If not, please post here or email us (dtwof at dykestowatchoutfor dot com) and let us know. We appreciate any tech tips you may have. The feed URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/DtwofTheBlog.

Yes, I am, in fact referring to today, November 2nd, when our fine country elects its next leader. But I'm also referring to the pub date of Alison's next DTWOF collection. We've received several queries recently asking when exactly that big day will be. My source tells me sometime in the fall of 2005.