Cartoon News from the AAEC
June 19, 2009A letter from the prez
Working as an editorial cartoonist this year—working, that is, if anyone is interested in employing you—is like living inside Casey Kasem's brain: The hits keep on coming. Whether it's Robert Ariail or Jim Borgman or John Branch or Gary Brookins or Stuart Carlson or Richard Crowson or Bill Day or Eric Devericks or Brian Duffy or Peter Dunlap-Shohl or Bill Garner or Steve Greenberg or Lee Judge or Jim Lange or Drew Litton or Patrick O'Connor or Dwane Powell or Ed Stein, watching one of these great cartoonists, artists who developed close ties to their readers and communities, get laid off—and their positions eliminated—would have been terrible. We've lost 21 full-time staffers (including Chip Bok, Ben Sargent and Tom Meyer, who took buyouts) since I took the reins in September. Twenty-one! As you know, we didn't have many staff jobs to begin with.
The damage to our profession and newspaper readers is incalculable. Staff jobs are the primary source of income for editorial cartooning, not least because they provide a base for the local cartoons that inspire the greatest reader loyalty. Syndication doesn't provide health or retirement benefits. And no one has figured out how to eke a living from the Internet.
At times like this it's tempting to echo the oft-heard cry that we are, in the words of Ed Stein, the finest whalebone corset makers in America—quaint and doomed. But there's more to the state of editorial cartooning in 2009 than newspapers going out of business and/or getting rid of the only graphic political satire on their pages (who needs readers under 60 anyway?).
As I like
to tell reporters who call for a quote for the latest “death of political
cartooning” story, there are more AAEC members now than there were last
year. And there were more ...
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