David Horsey announced on his SeattlePI.com blog that Milt Priggee will now be a featured editorial cartoonist for the online-only SeattlePI.com.
As I shift gears to add a broader national audience in the string of Hearst newspapers stretching from Connecticut and New York to Texas and California, Milt Priggee will be taking aim at targets close to home in the Northwest. I am excited to have my friend Milt join me. And, you know what? This gives seattlepi.com two more editorial cartoonists than any other local news web site.
Milt is based out of Oak Harbor outside of Seattle where he self-syndicates his cartoons. He previously worked for the Spokesman-Review in Spokesman Washington between 1987 and 2000. Milt’s new SeattlePI.com blog can be seen here.
See. There are still cartooning gigs out there!
The trick is, finding paying cartooning gigs. Hopefully, this will develop into paying jobs in the same manner we had in newspapers. It’s a start anyway.
Congratulations, Milt! Best of luck making this new gig work!
Milt’s a great cartoonist who will be an excellent addition to the P.I. web endeavor. Go get ’em buddy!
Congrats, Milt! You’ve earned this, my friend.
THANKS everybody-
But RESPECTFULLY, there are no more cartooning gigs. This is a GREAT opportunity.
Newspapers and news services for years used to employ cartoonists as editorial cartoonists and/or comic strippers. There are easily less than ninety staff newspaper cartoonists left in America. When they go, they’re gone, they won’t be replaced. That cartoonist is holding onto what they themselves have, the cartooning gig is gone.
Pulitizer winners have been laid-off, bought-out, furloughed and some have even walked away (from print).
Like I said it’s not a gig as much as it’s an opportunity…an opportunity to do what I want with it. That’s right, NO money…….(for now). We’ll see what the future holds. The best way to predict the future is to create it…so that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s a new dawn.
At least I have an accepted journalistic platform without having a daily debate with an editor about the finer aspects of the First Amendment, etc, etc…
Newspapers eventually will no longer employ cartoonists. There is now not one staff newspaper editorial cartoonist here in the state of Washington. There were at least 5 here for some time. Newspaper COMPANIES may employ a couple whose work will be distributed among the chain. That’s it. Ironically further cutting the syndicates ability to make sales.
Everybody, is either redefining themselves or creating completely new entities. When one door closes, another opens. It’s a new dawn means we can’t hold onto to something that no longer exists.
Again, THANK YOU for the kind thoughts and now back to creating the future.
Milt
Hiya Milt. Congrats on the new gig. Go get ’em, dude.
Hi Milt,
Is it non-exclusive such that you would look to put your same blog on other non-paying aggregation sites to extend your reach – Huffington Post for example? Are non-paying aggregator sites the new “accepted journalistic platform”?
-Daryl
Hey Daryl,
‘Are non-paying aggregator sites the new â??accepted journalistic platformâ??’
YES- non-paying aggregator sites are the new accepted journalistic platform….. mainly by default. Meaning they, the media producers of these sites really don’t know what else to do. They don’t know what will work, so they don’t know what to do or even how to go about it.
Everybody including cartoonists are trying to recreate what they had pre-Internet. That’s the problem. The digital age has changed EVERYTHING. We are at the very beginning of a new age.
In essence, everybody is auditioning in this ‘trial & error’ time right now. The things that generate traffic will stay, the things that don’t won’t.
The bottom line is, you have to be salesman, because, if you can’t sell yourself, nobody else is going to do it for you and you’re going to be very hungry real quick.
I appreciate your entrepreneurial attitude, Milt.