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| Continued... The author continues,"The problem is that everybody heads in the same direction on the same days." Pett is also quoted as saying that it isn't only the cartoonist's fault:"Editors tend to like stuff that doesn't take much thinking or analysis." The article goes on to note that"cartoons mirror the mainstream headlines." As Pett points out,"Before Princess Diana's death...you couldn't print a cartoon about land mines to save your life." Fifteen years ago, when The London Free Press's long-time staff cartoonist, Merle Tingley, retired, the paper decided to use syndicated work. Today, the Free Press strikes a compromise: although still running syndicated cartoons, the paper also uses a local freelance cartoonist, Paul Lachine. Some weeks, like many staff cartoonists, Lachine is featured three times and sometimes more if there is a big local event going on, or as Helen Connell, who is in charge of the paper's editorial pages, says,"If his work is the best of the pile that day." Lachine is not paid as well as a staff cartoonist would be, and he does not receive benefits. Connell says that she pays top dollar for cartoons that are made for the Free Press, but adds that the paper's budget does not allow her to hire a full-time staff cartoonist. The expense seems to be a discretionary one, though. The London Free Press has a circulation of just over 100,000 readers, according to the January 1999 Canadian Advertising Rates and Data. Yet The Daily News in Halifax, which has a circulation of just over 28,000 readers, has a full-time cartoonist on staff. There are no French-language newspapers that use syndicated work. The specific regional issues and the language barrier mean that French dailies are more inclined to hire a staff or a contract cartoonist. Terry Mosher's work reflects Montreal as surely as some of Alan King's cartoons reflected Ottawa. Steve Nease is a winner of the 1998 Canadian Community Newspapers Association's award for editorial cartoonists. Like about half of the syndicated cartoonists, he acts as both the distributor and the creator of his work. Nease, who is concerned that papers are moving away from local issues in general, thinks that if a newspaper is relying on syndicated cartoonists, its readers are learning even less about local affairs. This shift from local journalism is evident at the Ottawa Citizen. Cameron Cardow, its current cartoonist, lives in Calgary, so his cartoons rarely stray from international or national topics. Many cartoonists like to work at home, but when home is far away from the paper's audience, the ability to gauge local issues is lost. For instance, one of Charles Jaffé's cartoons made fun of Ottawa's ice storm victims. He thought that he was helping readers lighten up about the experience, but the cartoon was not well received, especially by Neil Reynolds. On the other hand, many of Alan King's cartoons were local. In fact, two of his cartoons hang on the walls of the mayor's office in Ottawa. The importance of resident cartoonists is particularly evident in highly competitive local markets. In Halifax, the two dailies are serious rivals. Fighting for similar audiences, The Daily News and The Chronicle-Herald employ staff cartoonists who go for the jugular and cover the local angle. The situation is one that makes cartoonists across the country envious. Bill Turpin, the editor of The Daily News, says,"I consider it a real luxury for a paper our size to have a staff cartoonist." He believes that editorial cartoonists should be the loose cannons rolling around the deck of a newspaper. As an editor, he adds,"What you really want is a cartoonist who makes you nervous." And nervous is what many editors are. Their concern is that cartoonists sometimes go too far and offend readers. And sometimes they do. There have been cases of libel suits being brought against Canadian editorial cartoonists, the most notorious occurring in British Columbia in 1978. Future provincial premier William Vander Zalm, then minister of human resources, sued the publisher, the editor and the cartoonist of the Victoria Times after the paper's cartoonist, Robert Bierman, depicted Vander Zalm gleefully pulling the wings off of a fly after a major shakeup took place at the ministry. The original court decision found that the cartoon went beyond fair comment because it implied that Vander Zalm enjoyed hurting people, instead of just showing that he had indirectly hurt people as a result of layoffs caused by his ministry. But the paper was acquitted on appeal. A year ago, in Saint John, N.B., Josh Beutel, a local newspaper cartoonist, was sued for libel by Malcolm Ross after Beutel produced a cartoon suggesting that Ross was a Nazi. Ross, a former New Brunswick schoolteacher, had published controversial material considered by many to be both anti-Semitic and racist. He had been removed from teaching in the classroom by the school board after an inquiry into his views. Beutel lost the case and the New Brunswick Teachers' Association was forced to pay $7,500 in damages to Ross. But given the freedom to take risks, cartoonists can produce true works of originality (despite their differences, Neil Reynolds refers to Charles Jaffé as a comic genius in his own way). If it is inevitable that papers are going to tighten budgets, perhaps the best choice is to use a local freelancer, as The London Free Press does, to address community issues. At work here is a clash of philosophies between editors like Neil Reynolds, who think that cartoonists should be partisan and attack along those lines, and editorial cartoonists, who value the freedom to satirize every deserving target‹what Serge Chapleau, editorial cartoonist with La Presse in Montreal, calls la bête d'humanité. And as he says,"that is not owned by one political party." |
| Off With Their Heads!
By ALAN MLYNEK RYERSON REVIEW OF JOURNALISM - Summer 1999 There's trouble in the land of 'toon. What's happening to editorial cartoonists is no laughing matter. |
| Source: Ryerson Review of Journalism |