Just received confirmation that Eric Devericks, editorial cartoonist for the Seattle Times, has been laid off along with 40 to 50 others. Eric’s position was on the cutting block earlier this year, but was spared after enough staffers took a voluntary buyout. On this round, only about half of the necessary cuts were voluntary.
As to the future, Eric doesn’t know quite yet what he’ll do. He’s been with the paper for six and half years and was the 2001 John Locher Award winner.
Looks like we picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue …
This is truly sad news — most importantly for Eric, but also for the thousands of people (like myself) who enjoyed his editorial cartoons on a daily basis.
Hang in there Eric.
You can and will bounce back.
And again, this sucks.
Eric, I’m so sorry to hear this. Misery did not want company.
Looks like newspapers waited until after the election to do all their cuts… this might be the bloodiest week ever for editorial cartoonist job cuts.
Sucky day. Eric’s a great guy and one of my best buds in this business. Every layoff bugs me, but this one hits very close to home for me.
Even though I do not know Eric personally. I can only echo the comments of others that do.
It IS curious, as Steve has noticed…that these guillotines have co-incided post election.
I had a similar Coup de’Etah effected on myself after some biting editorials immediately following the 2000 imbroglio.
We need to ORGANISE!
TOO many greedy conservative outliers that make this PROFESSION a slave occupation.
We can do this! The jerks among us: the sell-outs, the Quislings, the ultra-conservative water carriers; MUST be quelled. They are ENEMIES! They are NOT friends.
Eric is an excellent cartoonist and a super guy who deserved MUCH better.
Hang in there buddy…!
It’s hustle time,….. the only thing you can count on is- that you can’t count on anything…..(except that daily newspapers are doing everything they can to make themselves as irrelevant to readers as possible).
This is only tangential to cartooning, but does have some relevance to the decline in editorial cartooning:
http://nickdenton.org/5083616/a-2009-internet-media-plan
“1. Get out of categories such as politics to which advertisers are averse. That’s easier for us to say since we spun off Wonkette earlier this year. And outfits such as the Huffington Post and most big-city newspapers-defined by their political coverage-will have difficulty redefining themselves. But media groups cannot afford in the current environment to fund their most noble missions; they should leave that to public-spirited
non-profits such as Pro Publica.”
No that Nick Denton is necessarily a great predictor…
Devericks is a no good HACK!
Thanks for all the kind words of support. If anyone wants to get in touch with me here’s my email:
devericks (at) gmail (dot) com