Scott Hollifield: Comics-free newspaper no laughing matter

Here's what I learned this week in my day job as a small-town newspaper editor: Never, ever, under any circumstances, ever, I repeat, ever, accidentally leave the comics out of the newspaper.
Ever.
And if I do accidentally leave the comics out of the newspaper, I should not go to work the next day. And if I do go to work the next day, I should not answer the phone. And if I answer the phone, I should be prepared for plenty of questions about whether or not I am qualified to be a small-town newspaper editor, whether or not I resemble the south end of a northbound mule and whether or not my parents were first cousins.
Your newspaper, the one you hold in your hands right now, provided you are not reading this on the Internet for free and shortening my already regrettable career, may be an error-free work of journalistic exquisiteness that would make a Pulitzer Prize committee member wet his pants due to its sheer magnificence, a work of contemporary art produced by dozens or even hundreds of highly intelligent individuals who graduated at the top of their classes with Latin accolades from prestigious J-schools.
But I doubt it.
Your newspaper might be more like mine. Most days, it's me and a handful of overworked underachievers doing the best we can with what we've got, putting out anywhere from 12 to 24 pages of meth lab busts, county commission meetings, photos of large or unusually shaped vegetables and paid notices announcing "Lordy, Lordy, So-and-So Turned 40."
So, on a typical Sunday, a grand total of three of us were hammering out a Monday paper, putting the finishing touches on stories, pasting down photos, proof-reading obits and griping about working on Sunday. At some point, I hit a computer keyboard stroke that I thought sent the comics page to the faraway land where the paper is magically printed. But I sent the wrong page. And no one caught the mistake.
In our defense, at the time, we thought the building was on fire. While the three of us were hammering and griping and sending wrong pages into the mist, we caught a whiff of something burning. In a 50-year-old building constructed entirely of kindling, this is cause for concern. Not a tremendous amount of concern, because we just kept working until it was difficult to breathe. Then we opened the windows and kept working.
Eventually, we thought it prudent to call the fire department, and a host of men and women in turnout gear who probably don't like working on Sunday either joined the festivities. In the end, it was a flaming furnace motor that smoked up the building and blinded us to the fact that the comics page was MIA.
The next day, when the comics-free paper hit the streets, I suddenly longed for happier times, like when I nearly choked to death breathing smoke from a flaming furnace motor. I found my voicemail full of messages from folks who were angry about missing the latest antics of Snuffy Smith. I spent most of the day having conversations like this:
"Where are the comics in today's paper?"
"We mistakenly left them out. We're going to run an extra page on Tuesday. I apologize and take full responsibility."
"Don't you have a proofreader?"
"She was let go in the latest round of layoffs and now works in the more lucrative field of aluminum can collecting."
"You ought to be fired."
"Would it change your mind to learn I barely escaped a raging furnace motor fire last night?"
"No."
And on and on it went. Readers may not concur as to what particular comic strip is the most beloved, but they can all agree on this: I am an idiot.
And that's what I learned this week in my day job as a small-town newspaper editor.