AAEC - Editorial Cartoon News
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February 13, 2006
Letter from the President
Well, it's been a wild few months. I can't remember when editorial cartoons, or those who create them, have been in the news quite so much. We've seen article after article proclaiming the death of our profession, only to be followed by stories that only seem to illustrate our continued vitality.
Since my last letter, two of our colleagues were discarded by the Tribune Company, one got the boot for plagiarism, and a fourth was unceremoniously dismissed at a newspaper that he served for thirty years. Hardly the best of times for our profession.
During that same period, however, four cartoonists have landed new jobs, another has incited the wrath of the entire joint chiefs of staff, and then there's some sort of controversy in Denmark that I've been hearing about. All are signs of a profession that's not just holding its own, but even a little bit more.
Good news or bad though, it sure seems like we're at a crucial point in time for our craft.
Depending on who you're talking to, or talking about, we editorial cartoonists are either too timid, or not timid enough, we're either the most indispensable feature on the editorial page, or one that can easily be replaced by a syndicated cartoon, we're either the most visible symbol of an industry in decline, or we're the profession that can best help insure its survival.
The only thing I think we can all agree on is that editorial cartoonists are the descendants of some of history's most influential rabble rousers and the torchbearers for a vigorous and independent press. As such, our survival is vital not only to those of us who have chosen this as a career, but also to anyone who believes that satire and ridicule is one of the best weapons against the pomposity and arrogance of power.
There are many strategies on how we can survive in today's market: some cartoonists are moving to the internet and exploring animation with the hope of eluding extinction in the newsprint tar pit, others avoid the dependency on a single newspaper's financial health by going it alone through syndication, still others try to escape the accountant's axe by giving their editors something that a syndicate can't: local cartoons. All are sound strategies for the survival of a cartoonist, but only the last actually encourages a newspaper to retain one of us on staff.
Perhaps the era of the staff cartoonist is waning. Maybe the future of our profession is in syndication. Maybe our fortunes lie, not in newsprint, but in 1's and 0's. I, for one, refuse to accept that forecast.
No doubt, newspapers are feeling the heat from the competition. If only the industry's ingenuity matched its profit margin, the future might look brighter. Newspapers can survive though, even flourish, but only when they determine what it is they're competing with and how best to combat it. Both television and the internet are heavy in both visual and opinion-based journalism, and the one journalist in a newsroom who excels in both of those traits is an editorial cartoonist. Eventually, our salvation will come when the industry realizes that having a cartoonist on staff is not just good for journalism, but good for business.
When I first got into this racket in 1980, two-newspaper towns still dotted the landscape, and editorial cartooning jobs were more abundant. Even so, my first job after college was not as a cartoonist, but as a staff artist. I was very eager to find a cartooning job somewhere else, and quite discontent to be drawing charts and maps, but I was lucky to be there.
I was lucky because the newspaper had an editorial cartoonist who took me under his wing. He pointed out what I was doing wrong, encouraged what I was doing right, and taught me more about this profession than I could have learned from a graduate course in the subject.
News of a colleague's dismissal always stings, but for me that sting was never quite as sharp as when I heard about Tim Menees. After 30 years of service to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, my mentor was laid off in an effort to cut costs.
I know what it's like to be fired, and I know how much it hurts. I just hope Tim realizes how much he's meant to the people of Pittsburgh for the past 3 decades, and how much he meant to a young cartoonist 25 years ago.
Best of luck to Tim and to you all.
Your comrade,
Clay Bennett