Sunday, April 26, 2009
From the Newsroom: Reader feedback to comics poll is overwhelming
From the newsroom
Michael Stowe, managing editor
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From the Newsroom blog
Reader e-mails indicate that many of you are anxious to learn the results of our recent comics poll. We'll publish who came out on top -- and the bottom-- next Sunday in the Extra section and on roanoke.com.
Sorry for the delay.
The response to the poll far exceeded our most optimistic predictions. So much so that we need another week to digest the results.
All told, 7,876 ballots were submitted. Incredible.
You can't fit that many people into the seats at Salem Memorial Ballpark, even if the tarps are taken off the seats. And it's not too far behind the 11,000 votes cast in Roanoke's last mayoral election.
As features editor Kathy Lu wrote in a blog post on roanoke.com: We were "gratefully overwhelmed" that so many people shared their feedback.
We heard from readers ranging in age from 10 to 91.
Lu, who plans and edits the Extra section, knows from experience that people are passionate about comics. Even so, she figured we would be lucky to get more than 1,000 responses.
Before this, our greatest reader response was to a music poll last year that generated 1,200 votes.
The majority of the comics ballots, 4,492, were cast online but more than 3,300 of you clipped and submitted the paper ballot we published March 22. The responses filled eight mail bins, each of which had to be sorted by hand and entered into our database. We had to recruit help from departments around the building to get it done.
"I was just floored," Lu said.
The poll will help us make more informed decisions about our comics selections, but Lu said the poll reaped an even better, unexpected result.
"The best part was all the comments," she said. "We learned more about our subscribers."
A number of readers echoed this comment from Patricia Heineman of Belspring, who said comics provide relief from the stress of everyday life.
"These days there is a lot of bad news, gloom and doom. The comics are the only bright spot that gets our day started out right," wrote Heineman, who completed the comics poll with input from her husband, Keith, and his parents, William and Betty Heineman.
A few other comments from the poll:
n "[Comics] are clever, wise, put things in perspective, stir reactions, prod us to weigh situations, they are slices of life, cynical, clever, inane, satirical, political, ethical slices. Have one or several daily."
n "I'm a dinosaur! I gotta get my 'funny papers' in my hand every morning. One reason that I read well is that I read comics religiously when I was a boy. They are tremendously important to build reading skills in kids."
n "One of the best features of the paper, like dessert! "
n "Best part of the newspaper, comics are 'believable' fiction, whereas most of the other articles, in the regular news, are hard to believe sometimes."
n "I learned to read comics and the sports pages of The Roanoke Times before I started to school in 1933. Most of my favorites were -- and are -- the continuity strips. They appeal to regular readers -- for the same reason many TV viewers are hooked on the soaps and long-running adventure shows. Gag-a-day strips (like mindless TV sit-coms) are for take-it-or-leave-it customers."
That's just small sampling. Thanks to everyone who took the time to share your comments and stories about what comics mean to you.
What else have we learned from the poll?
Every strip -- even the ones with the lowest rankings -- have many dedicated fans. And any decisions we make -- to add or to eliminate a strip -- will generate a rousing reaction.
We wouldn't want it any other way.
