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Editorial cartooning

Jake Fuller loses Gainesville Sun job

1 minute 29 comments

I’ve just been informed that Jake Fuller, editorial cartoonist for the Gainesville Sun (Gainesville, FL) has been laid off. Jake has been with the paper since 1992 and their full-time cartoonist since 1997.

More details to come as they become available.

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Comments 29

  1. That’s a true shame. Whether you agreed with his politics or not, Jake has a wonderful style. It’s Gainsville’s loss.

  2. Wow. Another layoff. What is going on.
    This is getting scary.

  3. In considering the current state and dynamics of this profession, I reflect on Wiley Miller’s comments and how much I agree with those thoughts.
    I have also argued that “collective bargaining” is a fact…even when no entity of professionals exists such as a union or a guild. The syndicates here assume the role of the anti-union, using their power to consolidate and homogenize; driving DOWN the price and keeping it at a level that generates outscale income for a relative few of the actual producers of this craft, and the continued income stream for the middlemen at the syndicates.

    I have no answers for this dilemma, other than being enterprenurial and busy.

  4. I find it difficult to believe the Sun would remove Jake from his job as political cartoonist for their paper. To me he was a great talent that is perhaps bigger than Gainesville. He specialized in lampooning political figures both local and national. He was biting in his work to both liberals and conservatives. I will miss his contribution to the Gainesville Sun.

    I predict he will not remain jobless for long. He is just too big a talent.

    Shame on you Gainesville Sun.

  5. Jake Fuller is a true artist. I am a writer and he printed many of my letters. I did not always agree with Jake and I never met him. I considered him a friend and he is very talented. I believe we are all born with a gift.Jake,s was his cartoon,s. It is sad to see that being politicaly correct is more important than being speaking your mind. He will be missed.

  6. Juvenile Jake has a lot of talent, but he belongs on the comic strip pages.

  7. As a huge fan of Jake and his work I find this disappointing but not surprising due to the flat-out carelessness of the Gainesville Sun. Jake was one of the highlights of the paper, now what’s left, sports? that’s it? It’s a shame, hopefully “Juvenile Jake” will cartoon for someone else…not the comic strips.

  8. Forgive me for kicking Fuller when he’s down, but he was NOT a high caliber cartoonist. I’m sorry that he’s losing his job, but I strongly disliked the majority of his panels. They should have had a warning sign on the front of the paper when they ran his work.

    It wasn’t a partisan issue, he truly wasn’t good. I love political cartoons and used to buy a paper in Boston with only political cartoons. I was very disappointed coming to Gainesville and seeing Fuller’s work clogging the editorial page.

  9. Joe Gleason should go back to Boston. I found Jake Fuller’s editorial cartoons to be fair and balanced. Mr. Gleason is obviously another liberal who can’t stand a fair view of the faults of both sides of the fence. Mr. Gleason —- get over it— most people like a fair and balanced approach to the news. That is why the networks, CNN, and MSNBC are losing viewers Fox News is growing. Mr. Gleason – open your mind. Jake Fuller is too good to be stuck with the Gainesville Sun. He was the only balance to what is now another left-leaning fish wrapper.

  10. Fox News is fair and balanced? In what galaxy?

  12. The only reason Fox News has become popular over the years is because of the growing proportion of stupid people in this country. Look at the rate stupid people are reproducing. See also Idiocracy.

  13. Fox is balanced to the right, just as “Think progress” is balanced to the left. So what?

    Everyone has an agenda. What’s stupid is that people even bother getting worked up about it.
    While CNN and Fox are prospering as the new media, the American comic strip and editorial cartoonist jobs are biting the dust.

  14. Jake has longed been appreciated by us Floridians. The overcasting shadows of the Gainesville Sun could just not endure anymore their little fortress of Marxism being pummeled.

  16. Ouch! I came here while looking for a place to react a Jake Fuller cartoon which I found offensive. At the same time, I am a big fan of opinion cartoons, even when I disagree with them, and hate the way newspapers are responding to the bad economy by yanking my favorite part of the paper. Mixed emotions here, for sure.

  17. Never mind. Just had an e-mail exchange with Jake in which he made it clear that my disagreement with his opinion indicated that I lacked testicles. Feel free to can him.

  18. @Phil: “Fox is balanced to the right, just as ?Think progress? is balanced to the left. So what?”

    Well, Think Progress has about 1/1,000,000th of the audience.

    One problem is that CNN tacks center-right, MSNBC tacks center-left, and Fox News is hard-right. There is no media outlet for the left-wing opinions shared by a significant minority of American people. (Actually, lefties are more likely to appear on Fox, albeit as foils, than on CNN or MSNBC.) Where are Americans to turn to hear opinions in favor of:

    Immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq?
    Immediate closure of Gitmo and Bagram?
    Trying Bush for war crimes?
    Abolishing inequality of income and wealth?
    Prison terms for thieving corporate executives?

    Never mind whether you personally agree with those opinions. Many Americans do, yet they are never, ever expressed in the mainstream media.

    Another problem is that Fox News calls itself “fair and balanced” and that many people take it literally. There’s nothing wrong with Fox being hard-right; so why are they misrepresenting themselves? I’d have no problem with them if they said what they were.

  19. Also, firing a cartoonist as talented as Jake Fuller is an act of idiocy.

  20. True. But not nearly as idiotic as “abolishing inequality of income and wealth”…

  21. You’re entitled to your opinion, Dave, even though it’s only shared by a tiny minority of humanity.

    Still, don’t you think any political process worthy of its name would allow all opinions to be expressed in the media?

    After all, Fox News allows views many find outlandish, like support for torture, racism and homophobia, to be broadcast. So do the other networks. Why are only extreme right-wing views allowed to be discussed, and never leftist ones?

  22. The majority of the planet holds many idiotic opinions as I’m sure you’d agree. Abolishing inequality of income and wealth? Haven’t the Communists proven what a short-sighted idea that was? And rivers of blood never changed a thing and the rich folks still held all the cards and all the power… Is Cuba a paradise? And how about that ol’ Guvmint Welfare here in the USA? Pretty effective at raising folks out of poverty? A great incentive to get a job? No?

    So, the majority of the world wants to abolish the inequality of income and wealth? Wow, where’d you get that idea? Sounds like crazy talk or somebody’s impressively stupid propaganda. Did they ask poor folk if they thought it was fair that rich folk had more? Hmm, I wonder what their answer would be… Is it some nimrod’s idea of a “fair” society? ‘Cause that’s how it is in Rainbow Fairy Land, all the imaginary creatures are equally paid no matter what they do…

    Really, the amount of “crazy” in that statement makes me wonder. I’d love to know your source for that.

  23. I’ve been catching up on Sam Harris’ work and using some of it as a point of departure for some of my cartoons. Sam is one of the new atheists four horsemen, along with Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennett. One of their main points of attack on religion is to knock down the idea that religion provides the only basis for morality.

    Sam is currently making the conference rounds and arguing that science can be used to measure the morality of a social system. He uses the term ‘wellbeing’ as a unit of that measure. So, if we total up the wellbeing of everyone on the planet, do we have an overall system in place that is moral?

    Given that about a billion people are malnourished, and 35 million die of hunger each year, it’s clear that we can do a lot better on that issue alone.

    My take on Sam’s TED talk: moral relativism

  24. @Dave wrote:

    <blockquote?The majority of the planet holds many idiotic opinions as I?m sure you?d agree.

    Of course. The point is, a vibrant political system allows all opinions?including idiotic ones?to be debated and discussed openly. The United States doesn’t allow leftist opinions to be expressed in the mainstream media, which is part of the reason our political dialogue is moribund.

    Abolishing inequality of income and wealth? Haven?t the Communists proven what a short-sighted idea that was? And rivers of blood never changed a thing and the rich folks still held all the cards and all the power? Is Cuba a paradise?

    There was much to recommend about Soviet-style socialism (the USSR never claimed to have achieved communism). People enjoyed job security, housing and food were extremely cheap, the arts and sciences enjoyed strong governmental support and thrived as a result. Many citizens of the former USSR miss the advantages they enjoyed before 1991…especially the hundreds of thousands of Russians who starved to death due to the advent of gangster capitalism in the 1990s.

    And how about that ol? Guvmint Welfare here in the USA? Pretty effective at raising folks out of poverty? A great incentive to get a job? No?

    The only thing worse than welfare is no welfare. I wouldn’t want to live in a country that allowed its least fortunate people to starve to death. Besides, the current system relies on high unemployment to keep wages low–so the welfare system is a form of corporate subsidy. Welfare recipients aren’t leaches–they’re American heroes, sacrificing for the greater good!

    But we can debate left vs. right all day long. The point is, these discussions shouldn’t just be happening on small niche websites, but in the media at large.

  25. “The United States doesn?t allow leftist opinions to be expressed in the mainstream media, which is part of the reason our political dialogue is moribund.”

    You’re kidding, right? What leftist opinions don’t get expressed in the mainstream media? That is all we hear. The only time the US media was moribund BEFORE networks like Fox, web pages like Drudge, and talkers like Limbaugh arrived on the scene. Back then we had three major networks, and a handful of major newspapers who all shared the same left wing world view and drove the news cycle for everyone else. The only publication that challenged that myopic vision during those days was Bill Buckley’s National Review, which had a limited reach. A balancing tension in the media only happened when the right gained traction through some of these other media forms.

    For whatever the faults of Russia’s “gangster capitalism” I think an accurate reading of Russian history would show far more people starving under Communist Russia, oops, I mean under “Soviet-style socialism ” than under their current system. I also don’t think the state supported Propaganda art created under the state of Communism would be considered an example of a “thriving arts” community by anyone except Mao or Stalin. Your cartoons wouldn’t last one day in a communist country.

  26. I don’t think **Ted Rall** would last one day in a communist country. He’d express his honest, heartfelt opinion in a political cartoon and the communists would express an honest, heartfelt bullet to Ted’s heart, brain and gizzard. After they tortured him KGB style… Or maybe all those artists and cartoonists that were killed were just accidents? Too much “thriving,” perhaps?

  27. @Dave: You’re probably right. I’m too much of a loudmouth to keep my opinions to myself, regardless of the political system.

    @Peter Murphy: The leftist opinions we never hear expressed in the mainstream media include, for example, the desirability of putting Bush on trial for war crimes, theft of two presidential elections, and looting the federal treasury. Millions of Americans would like to see that, yet it’s never talked about.

  28. Really? We must have been using our clickers differently. During Bush’s term I saw that stuff discussed everyday on MSNBC, and read Op-Eds galore about the “war crimes” committed under Bush during that same period. Hardly seemed like an unspoken topic.

  29. One of the comments regarded that most people in America believed in far left agenda items. What America? New York City,Cal Berkley,Boston,San Fran.. Hopefully in about 14 months we will go back to the America that thrived and created opportunites for all rather than the sad,weak,needy,nanny state the Dems. love.

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