Las Vegas Sun lays off Mike Smith

Comments ¹⁰

1. sam morris

   Losing an editorial cartoonist represents, as I told Mike a couple years ago when the Des Moines Register got rid of Duffy, losing the soul of a newspaper.

   There is nobody who can embody the editorial voice of a paper, nobody who can distill events of the day down into a panel, nobody at a paper that people will love/hate like an editorial cartoonist.

   Tonight I may go to bed and look through a tattered copy of a Herblock compilation and cry myself to sleep.

2. Paul Fell

   This totally stinks. Again. For the life of me I cannot understand why newspapers continue to amputate the very vital organs they need to stay alive and viable. They deserve every bad thing that happens to them. Simply for being so profoundly stupid.

3. Milt Priggee

   Nevada now joins the growing list of states that no longer have at least one staff newspaper editorial cartoonist.

4. Marshall Ramsey

   Mike is a class act. He was nothing but kind to me when I started out and I’ve always admired what he brought to his paper. I haven’t spoken to him in years, but I wish him well. I know he’ll do much better than just land of his feet.

5. Mike Lester

   Not specifically blaming Pres. MomJeans for this recent firing. But he’s trashed LV for years and much to the chagrin of Harry Reid. Unemployment in Las Vegas is 14%. Nevada has the nation?s highest unemployment rate among states at 13.4 percent. It rose from 12.9 percent in July. But this is a COMING TO A TOWN NEAR YOU moment. -If it hasn’t already or you live in South Dakota (3% unmplmt.) or make solar panels.

   Like most American families / businesses, newspapers have been cutting back and downsizing for years. But they’ve put it in another gear since…2008. Applying for an ed. cartoonists job at today’s newspaper is like asking them if they’d like to hire a phrenologist. Same reaction.

   I don’t know Mike but my heart / prayers go out to him and his family.

6. Mike Speciale

   When are big corporations going to look at the bottom line of their companies and the high salaries of corporate management and say, “I will take a pay cut in order to save some important jobs at my company” It appears that the higher ups like their high salaries and are willing to layoff people on the lower end so they can keep their high salaries. Brian, take a pay cut and try to hire back some of those that you just laid off. If will go a long way. Congress should do the same thing…cut their pay as well.

7. Mark Samuels

   The previous comment that newspapers are eliminating the very content that makes them unique is right on target … yet, as an industry, individual newspaper profit margins are far still higher than the typical business enterprise. It’s all about the debt the wheeler dealers acquired in building their empires — and the employees suffer. We need local interests to buy out local newspapers and return them to their original, community news-based missions.

8. clayton klayton

   All have to go sometime and some better than sooner.

   The biggest newspaper publisher in a city where walter disney was first employed and cut his newspaper teeth on and then became the mouse with the big ears and big teeth, laid off and shut down three editions of the newspaper. Only one edition and Sunday are now published. The rural route newspaper should not have been discontinued because now is the time that rural life is reaping after reeling from the dust bowl and drepression.

9. Pedro Molina

   That’s so sad! all the best to Mike, unbelievable that in the era of visual content and quick reading, cartooning is having such a bad time!…

10. vic harville

    CRAP!