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July 31, 2006
Tired and Inspired by New Web Duties
By Dave Astor
[The following appears in the August 2006 print issue of Editor and Publisher, and appears here with their permission.]
The workload isn't shrinking for America's shrinking group of staff editorial cartoonists, as some now do blogs and/or political animation for their newspapers' Web sites. Many of them enjoy these challenges, and realize that diversifying their skills may ultimately provide more job security. But like other journalists juggling print and Web tasks, their schedules have become more crammed.
"Editorial cartoonists used to get a paycheck for drawing cartoons, answering the phone, and doing community speaking," said Matt Davies of The Journal News in White Plains, N.Y., for which he does a blog. "Now we're also very much a part of a newspaper's online strategy."
Walt Handelsman, speaking of the animated cartooning he does for Newsday of Melville, N.Y., said: "It's exciting, it's fun, it's rewarding -- but it's just a huge amount of work." Handelsman volunteered to create the animations last December, and then spent "hundreds of hours" at home teaching himself how to do them. His first effort was posted on Newsday.com in February, and now he finishes one every two weeks. Some have taken as many as 70 hours to create, although he's more recently completed others in about 30 hours.
"I work on my print cartoons from 10 to 5 or 6 p.m. at Newsday, go home and have dinner, then work on the animated cartoons until midnight or 1 or 2 a.m.," he said. During those hours, sometimes the most interaction he has with family members is when they help provide voices for the animations.
Handelsman, a 1997 Pulitzer Prize winner syndicated by Tribune Media Services (TMS), has saved a little time since starting the animations by creating four rather than five print cartoons a week. And, as he "banks" an archive of animated images (such as George W. Bush in the Oval Office), the five-year Newsday veteran can reuse them in new cartoons.
Orange County (Calif.) Register/King Features Syndicate Editorial Cartoonist Mike Shelton also spends extra hours on the political animations he co-creates with Jocelyne Leger, illustrator and art director for the Register's Commentary section.
"Jocelyne and I have other duties, so we do some of the work on our own time," said Shelton, who joined the Register in 1983. "But we're not complaining." Leger said it can take her and Shelton as many as 65 hours to complete an animated piece of work -- including coming up with ideas, creating storyboards, doing the drawings, and adding movement, music, and voices. Like Handelsman, the duo posts a new one every two weeks or so.
Shelton, who's allowed to draw four rather than five print cartoons a week if the animation gets too demanding, has also done a blog for the Register since January.
The Journal News' Davies launched his blog in May. "It hasn't added to my workday, but it has added to my workload," said the TMS-syndicated cartoonist, who spends an average of 45-60 minutes a day on the blog. Davies said he relies on "time management" to fit in the extra work without increasing his hours.
Some editorial cartoonists update their blogs less frequently. Clay Jones of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., for example, said he adds content to his blog an average of once or twice a week, either at the office or from home. One reason Jones doesn't update his blog more frequently is that he often prefers to "let my cartoons do most of the talking."
Another reason, he added, is the time factor. "I like the blog a lot, but the most important thing for me is doing five cartoons a week," said Jones, whose work is distributed by Creators Syndicate.
Davies also likes to blog, and said the positives outweigh the negatives. He mentioned that the blog decreases his time on the phone because some readers write to the blog rather than call him. And the cartoonist, who joined The Journal News in 1993 and won a Pulitzer in 2004, added that writing for the blog helps him organize his thoughts and come up with fresh cartoon ideas. "Writing and cartooning are very close cousins," he noted.
When interviewed by E&P, Davies was working with the Journal News' online staff to develop cartoon animations for the paper's site, so Davies' schedule could become significantly busier.
Cartoonists usually aren't paid for their extra work, but newspapers are certainly benefiting. Cartoonists' blogs tend to draw a lot of traffic, as do animated creations. The Shelton/Leger animations quadrupled traffic to Shelton's blog between May and June, and Handelsman's animated works are consistently among Newsday.com's most e-mailed items.
In addition, because of the multimedia and often edgier nature of newspaper animations, the audience drawn by such works tends to be younger than those who enjoy print cartoons. "I've showed my animations at schools, and kids love them," said Handelsman. "If newspapers want to entice a younger readership, there's a tremendous upside to this."
He added that animations can have a longer shelf life than print cartoons. Since he can do only one labor-intensive animation every two weeks, Handelsman explained, "you have to look at news in a different way. You have to look at broader issues that last for weeks and months."
Davies knows the budget pressures newspapers face, but still cautiously hopes that the popularity of cartoon blogs and animations might convince papers to employ more cartoonists. "If I was an editor, I'd hire cartoonists and put them on the Web," he said. "They can really draw attention to your site."