Clay Bennett’s “Letter from the President” has been posted to the AAEC website. He talks about the wild ride the last four months have been with the number of editorial cartoonists that have lost their jobs, the Mohammad cartoon, and the newspaper industry.
No doubt, newspapers are feeling the heat from the competition. If only the industry’s ingenuity matched its profit margin, the future might look brighter. Newspapers can survive though, even flourish, but only when they determine what it is they’re competing with and how best to combat it. Both television and the internet are heavy in both visual and opinion-based journalism, and the one journalist in a newsroom who excels in both of those traits is an editorial cartoonist. Eventually, our salvation will come when the industry realizes that having a cartoonist on staff is not just good for journalism, but good for business.