Newsroom Cartoonists – Cartoonist Chronicles

Cartooning the Mid-20th Century Newsroom

Cartoonists and other artists, working in newsrooms, captured and caricatured their working lives, including their colleagues, in these places. What follows is a small sample of the images I have gathered in my research for my new book on the history of the American newsroom from the 1920s through the end of the 1950s, to be published with the University of Missouri Press early next summer. I’ll describe what’s happening in each image and provide further context.

The American Newsroom as Seen in Cartoons: 1930-1960 by Dr Will Mari

Cartoonists and Editors, A Duel

Unlike editorial cartoonists at most Canadian dailies, [Alan] King, whose work has been self-described as low taste, had to get approval from both Reynolds and the paper?s publisher, Russell Mills, before his cartoons were allowed to run. After King depicted Don Cherry in a way that Reynolds referred to as nasty, Reynolds killed the cartoon late in the day, and King did not provide the paper with a cartoon for the first time since he?d worked there. The next morning he was demoted to staff illustrator at the Citizen, a paper which rarely used illustrations. He quit the paper three days later.

Examples of the editorial cartoonists’ precarious position at Canadian newspapers (1999).

Cartoonists and Publishers, A Duet

I recently asked several publishers two questions: How valuable has having an editorial cartoonist on staff been for your newspaper? And are there any unexpected benefits? These questions inspired many publishers to air their views about the current state of cartooning at American newspapers.

Bruce Plante asks Publishers about Cartoonists (2004)