Clay Jones A Casualty of CNN Downsizing Update: Clay Opens a Substack Account

Clay Jones informed fans and supporters last night that his CNN engagement has come to an end:

… One of the assistant editors, Jane, informed me last Friday (July 12) that after five years, I no longer had a freelance gig with CNN. The editor of the opinion section, Rich, gave me a courtesy call this morning to express his appreciation and to wish me well. I’m going to miss working with the Opinion team at CNN, but I never allowed myself to believe this would last forever…

Clay’s last contribution to CNN seems to be the two-fer of June 30, 2024.

… When I first started for CNN in 2019, I thought it was a one-time thing…and then it stretched out over five years. That was wonderful. I was doing fine financially (I mean, I was getting by) before CNN but during those five years, we got the COVID pandemic, and the news industry, which was suffering already, got hit even harder. I lost half of my clients during the pandemic. That made me lean on the income from CNN even more. So, this is a huge hit for me financially. I’m not panicking…

While we only see the finished product Clay tells what goes on behind the scenes of a freelance cartoonist:

… When I left The Free Lance-Star and Creators, I was no longer just a cartoonist. I was also a blogger, salesman, office manager, web designer, promoter, janitor, editor, publisher, and bookkeeper. Ugh. Gone were the days when I could draw a cartoon, send it to an editor, forget about it, and then carry on with the rest of my day. My work didn’t stop for the day when my cartoon was finished. After drawing a cartoon, I had to send it to clients, promote it, write a blog, invoice clients, and eventually, I started doing the videos. I had to create a relationship with readers. I had to pitch, pitch, pitch, and pitch some more…

Clay explains changes are in store for how we will read and support his efforts.

Update, later that same day.

In a comments below Clay mentioned something new coming and noted, “You can probably guess what it is.”

Clay Jones has joined the growing Substack community allowing fans to support their favorite creators.

… In case you don’t already know me, I’m Clay Jones. I’m an award-winning self-syndicated political cartoonist and I created this Substack so I can survive…

… For the past five years, I have been drawing a weekly cartoon for CNN Opinion which just ended. Before I started with CNN, I was self-syndicating my cartoons to newspapers throughout the nation. Unfortunately, I lost half of those newspapers during the pandemic and relied more and more on the income from CNN. As Scooby might say regarding my contract with CNN ending, “Rut-Roh…what now? Substack now, that what now…

Clay’s Claytoonz Substack account has been added to TDC’s Support Your Local (or Distant) Cartoonist list.