Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for November 22, 2024

“And then I chuckle quietly to myself when I think about how I stole their IP and files without any repercussions and about the hundreds of lower-level employees who are now jobless, even thought the execs managed to escape with golden parachutes!”

It’s just like “It’s a Wonderful Life”…if George Bailey was a smug, self-centered know-it-all.

That’s nice. Where’s Crankshaft?

So the Sentinel folded, and, um, he was trapped in its office when the space-time continuum struck an iceberg and went down with all hands? Or is his office just a room in his house that he converted into a duplicate of his old office, complete with a lettered glass window in the door?

Man comic has really….changed. NOT in a good way.

Golly, I sure love these stories about…hedge funds? Gol dang, we need more stories about…WHAT THE F TOM?! What’s next, “Me eat beans, need to fart!” Thank you, Thomas, for addressing a subject that no one even knows what you’re talking about! What giant conglomerate wants to buy a paper in NOWHERESVILLE? “And THEN—they sued the gum stuck on my shoe!” BLONDE CLONE: “duh, I guess”

So what if some hedge fund buys and folds newspaper? Me is always folds newspaper after me is buys it. Easier to carries the newspaper that way, Skippy. It’s called carrying.

Or did you means they was acquires or invest in your little newspaper company? Why the fund is hedge fund buys a obscure little newspaper company with only one employee? From what me knows Hedge funds is pool money from investors and invest in securities or other types of investments with the goal of getting positive returns.

So lemme gets this straight.

1. How anyone investing in yours little newspaper is cause it to “fold up”?

2. Because they is funding yours newspaper means they is help you run newspaper when you need the help. Otherwise why you take their money and let em takes over newspaper company?

2. Unless the readership was declined so badly that ain’t nobody was buying yours little local newspaper, why and how would anyone investing in yours newspaper is cause it to close?

3. This means that yours newspaper would close much earlier anyways had they not bothered to invest in your little newspaper.

4. Which means it not because they going bankrupt is what cause your newspaper closing down. It means that they wents bankrupt after they choose to invest in your steenky little newspaper.

But sure blames them for investing in yours little newspaper and trying to keeps it alive and even causing them to goes bankrupt because of your little newspaper that nobody is want to reads. It’s called blaming.

Ummmm… OK….?

“It’s all fund and gains until someone loses an IRA.”

(soft sobbing) please make it stop…

This is really good.

Ummmm…..in what century was this written? We are in an era where newspapers fold all the time, no matter who owns them.

So “everything is going bankrupt” is universal balance?

And that’s what they get for running a newspaper in a Non-Batiuk Approved Manner

You mean some group owns this paper and pays this geezer a salary??

Emily stood with her notebook open, the pen still in her hand. Mr. Rawlings walked the newsroom, his voice rising and falling like an old sermon, full of conviction about truth, integrity, and the death of the newspaper business. But Emily’s mind wasn’t there. It was somewhere else—somewhere darker, quieter, and filled with questions she didn’t have the answers to.

She had missed her period. It was a thought she couldn’t shake, no matter how much she tried to focus on Rawlings’ words. The memory of the college party came back to her in flashes: the music too loud, the room too hot, and his face, blurred and distant now, but still there. She had been careless, and now the weight of that night pressed on her like a stone.

What if she was pregnant? The question circled her mind, relentless and cruel. She thought of her future, the career she wanted, the places she dreamed of going. A baby would change all of that. It would pull her out of school, tie her down, turn her dreams into something distant and unreachable. Her stomach twisted at the thought.

But then, another thought crept in—a small, fragile thing that she didn’t want to admit. A child was more than a consequence. It was hope. It was life. She thought of her mother, how she had always been there, always supportive, always kind. Emily thought, maybe, she could be like her. Maybe she could do it. But then the fear came again, stronger this time. How would she tell her mother? How could she face her family, her professors, her friends?

Rawlings kept talking, his voice a steady drone in the background, something about algorithms and clown-show news stations. She wished she could listen, wished she could focus. But the truth—the raw, undeniable truth—was that she was terrified. And in that moment, all the talk of integrity and journalism felt far away, as distant as the dreams she feared she might lose.

Blonde will write story, old guy folds paper.

Yes, it is. I believe they call it karma.

skippy shouldnt you be down at the post office mailing miss galexia a check ??

f f f flood the zone with f f f flood the zone with

Ooh…maybe the newspaper could run reviews of the movies that are playing at that old-timey theater that no one cares about anymore either!

That doesn’t bring the paper back, Tom. It just puts even more people out of work. But what am I saying? Tom feeds on human misery so of course he considers this a win.

When bad things happen to evil people…..

Don’t write that down!!!!

YAAAAAWWWWNNNN……..yawn….

PENNYSAVER,where are you?

Follow the money until the trail disappears.

This is a tiny local paper, with a staff of ONE. And he’s going to do this massive investigative story about a huge out of state company? Yeah, okay. And he’ll fit that in between the other articles dealing with the high school car wash fundraiser and the results of the last board meeting.

Elections have a way of doing that too :-)

Gee, kinda sorta, reminds me of what happened to the city daily that absorbed our community newspapers. Bad ownership got it merged with the city NPR affiliate.