Editorial cartooning Newspaper industry

The continued dwindling of editorial cartooning

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Alan Gardner January 16, 2006 1 minute 0 comments

Along with the departure of KAL from the Baltimore Sun, the Sun has written a fairly long article (free registration required) on the demise of the number of editorial cartoonists in America.

There are a couple of good quotes from Chip Bok of The Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio:

“In the long run, they’re going to regret this,” Chip Bok, an editorial cartoonist for The Akron Beacon Journal since 1987, said in a phone conversation last week as he worked on a cartoon about Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. being questioned by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, whom he described as “a bunch of prima donnas.”

“The profit margin is better with a minimal product,” said Bok, whose syndicated cartoons appear in more than 100 publications. “In stark terms, a staff cartoonist is not essential to putting a newspaper on your front porch every morning.”

and Chris Lamb, who wrote “Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons in the United States“:

“An editorial cartoonist is a sort of Rush Limbaugh with brains, or a Bill O’Reilly with a sense of humor,” Lamb said. “Or, to extend the metaphor further, a Sean Hannity with brains and a sense of humor.”