Editorial cartoonists’ firings point to steady decline of opinion pages in newspapers
NEW YORK –
Even throughout a 12 months of sobering financial news for media corporations, the layoffs of three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists on a single day hit like a intestine punch.
The firings of the cartoonists employed by the McClatchy newspaper chain final week have been a stark reminder of how an influential artwork kind is dying, a part of a common development away from opinion content material within the struggling print business.
Losing their jobs have been Jack Ohman of California’s Sacramento Bee, additionally president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists; Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. Ohman and Siers have been full-time staffers, whereas Pett labored on a contract contract. The firings on Tuesday have been first reported by The Daily Cartoonist weblog.
“I had no warning at all,” Ohman informed The Associated Press. “I was stupefied.”
McClatchy, which owns 30 U.S. newspapers, stated it might not publish editorial cartoons. “We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the chain stated in an announcement.
There’s a wealthy historical past of editorial cartooning, together with Thomas Nast’s vivid takedowns of corrupt New York City politicians within the late 1800s and Herbert Block’s drawings of a sinister-looking Richard Nixon in The Washington Post.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there have been about 2,000 editorial cartoonists employed at newspapers, in keeping with a report by the Herbert Block Foundation. Now, Ohman estimates there are fewer than 20.
The final full-time editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer was Jim Morin of the Miami Herald in 2017. Since then, owing to the diminishing variety of employed cartoonists, the Pulitzers have broadened the class during which they compete and renamed it “Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.”
While written editorials can typically be ponderous and intimidate readers, the influence of a well-done cartoon is instantaneous, Pett stated.
“Usually when you look at an editorial cartoon, it’s (done by) some guy like you who is pissed who can draw,” he stated. “It’s just relatable.”
While economics is clearly a think about an business that has misplaced jobs so dramatically that many newspapers are mere ghosts of themselves, specialists say timidity additionally explains the dwindling variety of cartoonists. Readers are already disappearing, why give them a cause to be indignant?
Pett has been concerned in a battle with Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s legal professional common and a Republican candidate for governor. Cameron, who’s Black, has accused Pett of being a race-baiter in his cartoons and known as for his firing at a news convention — not understanding that hours earlier, his want had been granted, stated Pett, a Pulitzer winner in 2000.
His bosses by no means informed him to keep away from cartoons about Cameron, however gave him a sequence of pointers, Pett stated. For occasion, he was informed to not depict Cameron sporting a MAGA hat backward.
“There’s a broader reluctance in this political environment to make people mad,” stated Tim Nickens, retired editorial web page editor on the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. “By definition, a provocative editorial cartoonist is going to make somebody mad every day.”
Pett agrees.
“I could have looked at the guy who fired me and said, `I’ll do it for free,’ and they would have said no,” he stated.
McClatchy insists that native opinion journalism stays central to its mission. The Miami Herald, a McClatchy newspaper, received a Pulitzer this 12 months for “Broken Promises,” a sequence of editorials a couple of failure to rebuild troubled areas in southern Florida.
In the present ambiance, nevertheless, opinion is much less valued. Gannett, the nation’s largest chain with greater than 200 newspapers, stated final 12 months the papers would solely supply opinion pages a few days every week. Its executives reasoned that these pages weren’t closely learn, and surveys confirmed readers didn’t wish to be lectured to.
That additionally meant much less room for cartoons.
The reasoning is there are many locations to search out opinion on-line, significantly on nationwide points. Political endorsements are extra rare at newspapers. In 2020, solely 54 of the nation’s prime 100 newspapers endorsed a presidential candidate, down from 92 in 2008, in keeping with the American Presidency Project on the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“When publications really don’t stand for anything in an editorial sense, that’s damaging, whether the pieces are widely read or not,” stated Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at The Poynter Institute.
While the concept could also be to avoid polarizing nationwide points to focus on native issues, the irony is that newspapers that also wish to use cartoons might be compelled to show extra to syndicated companies, whose items primarily take care of nationwide or worldwide points.
That’s what Pett attracts for his contract with the Tribune Media Co., not cartoons about Kentucky.
“This isn’t a crisis of cartooning particularly,” stated Mike Peterson, a blogger at The Daily Cartoonist. “This is a crisis of newspapers failing to connect with their community.”
Like newspaper house owners, some cartoonists themselves worry there may be much less style now for political satire, and extra for inoffensive, humorous drawings of the kind fashionable within the New Yorker journal.
“At the end of the day, I think people like cartoons,” stated Ohman, who received his Pulitzer in 2016. “But it’s hard for a cartoon to be ecumenical.”
