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| Years before cancer cut short his life, editorial cartoonist Jeff MacNelly described his professional purpose to an interviewer. "You're making fun of things. You're never saying anything nice or supportive," he said. "I have a sense of humor about these things. I look at people, and I like to laugh at them."
An understatement if one was ever uttered. MacNelly was the consummate needler, poking fun at his subjects with a pointed pen but pulling more than laughs from his readers. Like all good cartoonists, he could incite anger, prompt tears and promote change with a small drawing that many people could take in within 10 seconds. When the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner died in June 2000, the Chicago Tribune remembered its cartoonist in an editorial titled "The Enduring Craft of Jeff MacNelly." "We will miss Jeff MacNelly," it read. "We will miss his craft." But it is a craft that, some fear, is dying. More than two years after MacNelly's death, his post at the Tribune remains unfilled and management has not explained the delay. It's perhaps the most high-profile open position in the cartooning world, but definitely not the only one. Editors at the San Jose Mercury News and the Buffalo News say they haven't replaced their cartoonists because of financial concerns. New Jersey's Asbury Park Press hasn't filled an editorial cartooning post that has been vacant for more than a year. New York's Daily News has eliminated its previously vacant position due to downsizing, according to the human resources department. And some cartoonists decry the "Newsweekization" of their field--a tendency for cartoons to be uniform as artists aim for reprints, not reader response. Editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette of the Tallahassee Democrat says editors are devaluing the cartoon, a sign that journalism is heading down the wrong path. "Cartoonists are the instincts of journalism. We're the canaries in the coal mine, and when we're keeling over and dying, that is the instincts of journalism," says Marlette, whose article "Editorial Cartoonists: An Endangered Species?" was published in Media Studies Journal five years ago. "To editors, cartoons are extra. All art is. There's no reason you have to have cave paintings. You have to kill the dinosaur, you have to have fire, but you don't have to have cave paintings." Paul Conrad, who draws for the Los Angeles Times, says one of the problems with editorial cartooning today is that it's too safe. Many artists, he says, have dulled their razor-sharp wit to avoid conflict. "I don't see a great deal in editorial cartooning today, and neither do the editors," Conrad says. "Damn few of them want cartoons that say something that should be said, politically, that is. As long as that continues, cartoonists are going to be in bad shape, but not as bad shape as the publishers and owners of the newspapers will be in when the people realize they're not reading anything." But the profession is thriving in other ways. The Washington Post and New Orleans' Times-Picayune recently have hired cartoonists. Marlette's own newspaper never had its own cartoonist before hiring him in July, a move that he says "goes against the grain" (see Bylines, September). And many cartoonists believe the field is alive and well, with young artists taking up a craft already filled with talented journalists. Bruce Plante, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and cartoonist for the Chattanooga Times' editorial page at the combined Times Free Press, says the fatalists should step back and look at what else is going on in the newspaper industry before declaring cartooning dead. On the whole, there are fewer papers these days, in the hands of fewer owners. And those owners are responding to slumping profits and the economic downturn with temporary and permanent cost-cutting measures, he says. Those are some reasons why there are fewer staff cartoonists today than 20 years ago and cartooning jobs are unfilled. "It's not a dying art. It's not a dying profession," says Plante. "We're seen by more people now than we ever have been. A cartoon that used to be seen only in Chattanooga is now seen around the world. I think it's an art that's more popular than ever before, and we have to remind the publishers out there that hey, we're here." Jack Ohman of Portland's Oregonian agrees that the profession, while embattled, is still viable. "I don't think political cartooning is dead," Ohman says. "There are a hundred-something political cartoonists, and they're all getting salaries. I think the popular thing to say is political cartooning has been hurt by them not filling these jobs--and I'd certainly say it hasn't been helped--but there are still a lot of cartoonists out there who are doing well financially, and they all have dental plans. And they do good, interesting work." Most credit Ben Franklin with the country's first editorial cartoon, a sketch of a snake cut into several pieces, each representing one of the Colonies. The drawing is labeled "Join, or Die." In the 1870s, Thomas Nast--the cartoonist who brought us the modern-day image of Santa Claus and gave the nation's two major political parties their animal mascots--so gnawed New York City's corrupt government that its leader, William "Boss" Tweed, allegedly offered Nast money to stop drawing. "I don't care so much what the papers write about me--my constituents can't read," Tweed reportedly said to his lackeys. "But damn it, they can see pictures. Let's stop them damn pictures." |
| Not So Funny
By Natalie Pompilio AMERICAN JOURNALISM REVIEW - October 2002 Several major newspapers are leaving their editorial cartoonist positions vacant. Are these civic needlers an endangered species? |
| Source: American Journalism Review |
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