The weekly Alexandria Times, based just a few miles from Capitol Hill,
has decided it will no longer print editorial cartoons about national issues:
The start of a new year brings new beginnings. Individuals make resolutions. Companies plan ahead. Changes are made…
There are exciting new beginnings at the Times as well.
The most immediately visible change is the absence of an editorial cartoon on this page. Since the Times is both hyper-local and stridently non-partisan, the presence of a national-focused cartoon has always been an anomaly.
We have heard from many of you through the years questioning our decision to run cartoons that focus on national issues. Our perhaps old-fashioned belief that an editorial cartoon completes opinion pages is what led us to keep running a nationally syndicated cartoon.
The national nastiness of last year was part of the impetus to drop the cartoon now. We are, however, open to running occasional cartoons that focus on local issues. Interested readers with an art background are welcome to send a submission to letters@alextimes.com.
A look at the paper’s December 2020 archives show Robert Ariail was their cartoonist of choice.
Hopefully they consider yesterday to be local news .
Purely out of curiosity of wondering if they expect local editorial cartoons to be created for exposure, I e-mailed them to find out if they were going to actually pay money for them. They are. They said $50 per cartoon.
That’s not bad for a 19,000 weekly. It’s what I would have expected for an article back in my freelance days and it’s more than I was able to pay a cartoonist when I edited a paper half that size.
I felt lousy paying as little as I did, but my own freelance career began doing book reviews for $5 and I got to keep the book. That’s where the tearsheets come from that get you into the Big Money.