Things are tough all over in the newspaper business - even in the comic strips.

Last fall, in Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury," Washington Post investigative reporter Rick Redfern was forced to take a buyout offer. On Saturday, ace reporter Brenda Starr will get the word from publisher B. Babbitt Bottomline that she has to take an unpaid furlough.

"As far-fetched as some of the plots in Brenda are, I do like to keep it topical," Mary Schmich, who writes the "Brenda Starr" strip, told the Chicago Tribune (where Schmich is also a columnist, who most famously penned the "sunscreen" advice that was turned into a hit single by Baz Luhrmann and was frequently misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut).

Schmich said Starr's life "is a fantasy with nuggets of reality tossed in. But even fantasies need some grounding in reality, and right now, economic crisis is the reality that colors everything else at pretty much every newspaper."

Labels: journalism