»Still on the payroll?

A few months after the Chronicle ditched Zippy the Pinhead (again), my father pointed out this comic:

I've written the Chron (again and again), only to receive in response semi-literate boilerplate about how periodic reader surveys determine which comics run in the 'paper. Do these same myopic readers suggest the microscopic size at which the Chron crams several dozen strips onto a single page? Even more so that most local newspapers in this day and age, they dishonour comic strips and artists by pushing the reproductions towards illegibility. Bill Watterson, champion of the art-form, refused to cave in to this practice a decade ago; now he no longer produces serial comics.