Mrs. Peg alerted me to this morning's Charles Osgood piece on the vanishing editorial cartoonist. Very sad:
The number of staff cartoonists working on American newspapers was 150 just over a decade ago. Now there are 80. True there are not as many NEWSPAPERS as there used to be either. But the ones that remain are LESS likely to have their own staff cartoonists. There was no mass firing. in most cases. says Mark Fiore formerly of the San Jose Mercury News. it?s just attrition.
SOT: Mark Fiore, Editorial Cartoonist
"When a cartoonist leaves, dies or is fired it's very rare for them right now to replace that cartoonist." :07
Remember Jeff MacNelly's lethal cartoons? Or Herblock's way of making Richard Nixon look so thug- like? Publishers seem to think political cartoonists may be too. well, too political.
SOT: FIORE: "I remember the new publisher coming in and saying something to the effect of 'Can we really go a little bit easier on Bush." :07
Here for us to contemplate is a newspaper riddle. how FUNNY can a cartoon be if it's straight down the middle. A drawing that's unbiased and objective my be bland. But it seems that now that's what the publishers demand.
Assuming we can find any, we'll let editorial cartoonists loose the same way we do reporters. A few weeks ago, if you asked me why, I'd have said its because we have balls. But that's not a long-term business model. The truth is that our business model empowers us to be fearless: When advertising is pay-for-performance, you're not as worried about losing advertisers as when you're praying that your customers don't catch on to your voodoo bait-and-switch.
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