Editorial cartoonist Jeff Koterba has been laid off by The Omaha World-Herald.
Jeff let us know today via his Twitter feed:
It is with deep and profound sadness that I must tell you that today, after over 31 years of drawing daily cartoons for my beloved hometown newspaper, The Omaha-World-Herald, my job was eliminated due to cost-cutting measures.
Jeff’s last two cartoons were on local issues, something the residents of Omaha will no longer enjoy.
Jeff expanded on the sad news on his Facebook page:
It is with deep and profound sadness that I must tell you that today, after over 31 years of drawing daily cartoons for my beloved hometown newspaper, The Omaha-World-Herald, my job was eliminated due to cost-cutting measures.
I am grateful to the many wonderful colleagues with whom I have worked these many years—fellow hardworking journalists who have taught me a great deal.But more than anything, I am forever indebted to you, my dear friends and readers, for your support and kindness during my career.I’m honestly still in shock and will certainly share more about future plans down the road. But for now, I’m just grateful for the many wonderful humans in my life.I am blessed.
According to Wikipedia Jeff has been cartooning for his hometown since he was a teenager.
Koterba started drawing editorial cartoons for the Omaha South High School newspaper. While at the University of Nebraska at Omaha he was the editorial cartoonist of the college newspaper, the Gateway. In college, he also drew cartoons for the suburban Omaha newspaper, the Bellevue Leader. After college he drew sports cartoons on a part-time basis for the Kansas City Star from 1986 to 1989 where his work also regularly appeared in the Los Angeles Times. He was hired by the Omaha World-Herald in 1989 as the editorial cartoonist, filling a 9-year void at that position. While at the World Herald, Koterba has occasionally written editorials and feature stories. Koterba describes himself as “passionate centrist”.
Jeff is distributed around the world through Cagle Cartoons, where we look forward to him continuing to inform and entertain us until he finds a new home if that is his wish.
edit: Daryl Cagle has made note of Jeff’s layoff.
Lee Enterprises took control of The Omaha World-Herald earlier this year.
Jeff (with son Josh) will continue to create new Chirpy comic strips, we hope.
This is really said news, hard to believe how much the World Herald has changed. It is not for the better we are losing our local news, and home contributors too. The cartoons were awesome while giving us thoughts on problems Omaha was having.
The paper is soon going to be a thing of the past.
I cannot believe that you have dropped Jeff Koterba! Of all the cost cutting measures this has got to be one of the worst you could have made. Mr. Koterba kept his pulse on both local and national issues in his thoughtful, professional, journalistic way. I hope the World Herald rethinks their decision and reinstates his political cartoons.
Part of why I subscribe to the paper has been to see Jeff’s cartoons. I cannot understand why the paper would cancel such an important part of the opinion pages. Please, BRING HIM BACK!!