Karen Hunter, the reader representative for the Hartford Courant, wrote Sunday about the complaints she receives about the Dilbert cartoon strip moving around the paper. Readers are particularly upset about its move to the business section, and the trouble they have finding it when there is no daily biz section.
Hunter wrote, “In October, ‘Dilbert’ was moved from the comics pages to the Business section. The decision, according to Business Editor Dan Haar, was ‘part of a redesign that made the inside pages more lively. The strip is, of course, about the workplace and so it belongs there thematically.’
“Haar said he has received only an occasional complaint, ‘when we don’t run the dividends box, and a reader will quip that we have room for `Dilbert’ but not dividends.’
“I, on the other hand, have been reminded countless times that the effort to make the Business pages livelier by adding ‘Dilbert’ is irritating. No one has threatened to drop their subscription over the move, but I can hear the exasperation in the e-mails, especially on days when there is no Business section and on Mondays, when the Business section is usually tucked in the Sports section.
“Vicky Chase, a librarian in Newington, explained how far she has had to go to read ‘Dilbert.'”
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