Journalist Jean Godden, writing for Westside Seattle, reveals that she has
always had a secret love affair with editorial cartoonists and wish I’d had the talent and training to be one. It’s one thing to be an editorialist trying to right the world in 700 words or less. It’s far, far better to slay dragons in a cartoon with less than 700 strokes of the pen.
Jean laments the current state of affairs regarding editorial cartoonists:
Back in the 1980s there were around 200 full time editorial cartoonists; today there are maybe 50.
The situation is dire. Take Texas. In 2017, Nick Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, was laid off and not replaced by the Houston Chronicle. Now there is not one single staff cartoonist left in the nation’s second-largest state.
She notes that no president is spared the cartoonists’ sharp pens and deplores the recent clash involving the Pittsburgh Press-Gazette and Rob Rogers. The inspiration for her column professing her admiration of political cartoonists is the upcoming Columbian College exhibit
“Spiked: The Unpublished Political Cartoons of Rob Rogers”
The exhibit will show 18 cartoons or ideas spiked between March 6 and June 3, 2018 (10 finished cartoons and 8 sketches).
…the original works of Rogers’ unpublished editorial cartoons, alongside larger, colorized versions that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette withheld from publication. In addition to our opening reception on July 18, this fall the Corcoran will be hosting a series of conversations regarding issues around censorship, freedom of the press, journalistic integrity and the consequences of nationalism to a democracy in collaboration with both the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) and GW’s School for Media and Public Affairs (SMPA).