Layoffs and job cutbacks have been a constant in the newspaper industry in recent years, but you know things are serious when a fictional reporter is getting the ax.

Rick Redfern, for years an investigative reporter for the Washington Post - as least, as seen in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury - got the news in today's strip (seen in hundreds of papers, including The Salt Lake Tribune): The budget for investigative reporting is being chopped, and he's being forced to take a buyout.


"The free-fall of newspapers is something I've been thinking a lot about lately," Trudeau told Michael Cavna, a real-life Washington Post reporter, on his "Comic Riffs" blog. "I'm feeling the hot breath of change on my neck too" with space reductions in the comics pages.

The ink-stained wretches can just read this week's Doonesbury and nod knowingly. If we haven't been there, we know somebody who has.

(Illustration: Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau/Universal Press Syndicate)

Labels: journalism