Times flinches on Doonesbury, twice

Los Angeles Times editors had decided, weirdly, not to run Garry Trudeau's vantage point on the election in tomorrow's Doonesbury strip because he assumed a victory by Barack Obama. Editors said, for what seems to be the first time, that comics — you know, personal creative fiction under the name of an artist — were required to meet some standard of "accuracy." Well, now they have changed their minds. But what did it take to cause this 180-degree flip in Times standards and/or conviction? Reactions from "more than two dozen readers," says a note on the Readers' Representative blog.