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August 30, 2008 Dueling "Toon Ops" The quality of my local Los Angeles Times has sunk so low that I've switched to reading the competing Los Angeles Daily News, which employs a full time cartoonist (Patrick O'Connor) and runs great editorial cartoons every day of the week. The LA Times now goes without any editorial cartoon three days a week, prints only one cartoon three days a week, and no longer employs a cartoonist. The Times even dropped their Sunday opinion section and runs Editorials and Op-Ed in the back of the front section on Sundays, like they do on weekdays. On Sundays, the LA Times runs three cartoons and a little blurb by cartoonist Joel Pett describing the cartoons. The Times calls it "Toon-Op." The competing Daily News has copied the "Toon Op" format and runs the same thing, in the same format, with a similar blurb by Patrick O'Connor describing his three cartoon picks. The Daily News' "Toon Op" ran at the top of the page today, and the Pett "Toon Op" ran at the bottom of the page. Both run the cartoons too small, and both apply a halftone screen to cartoons that are delivered in perfectly good, crisp, line art, degrading the print quality of the cartoons. (Newspapers often do this because they give the layout work to careless, low-paid, graphic-grunts who treat all images as though they were photographs from wire services.) Which is better? Patrick's choices today included three Cagle Cartoonists (Fairrington, Cardow and Beeler) while Pett's included only one Cagle Cartoonist (Beeler) - so I'll go with the Daily News - yet another reason not to read the LA Times. Patrick O'Connor's "Toon-Op"
in the LA Daily News: Joel Pett's "Toon-Op" in the
LA Times
I'm back from vacation! Sorry for being away so long and thanks to all of you who wrote in to complain that I wasn't drawing cartoons. In fact, we've been getting a few complaints about other cartoonists not updating their cartoons. This is summer vacation time for a number of cartoonists; sorry about that. My blog has finally been updated so that it has modern features, like permalinks and comments. Now I have to learn how to use all this stuff. Thanks to my programmer, Random for setting this up. I've started Twittering, you can follow my exploits throughout the day at: http://twitter.com/dcagle This is my last week to work on our BIG
Book of Convention 2008 Cartoons; my deadline is Monday and
the book should be in stores by the first of October. I'm hoping
to get McCain's VP choice in before I have to close this thing
out. That's the book cover, front and back, below. Brian Fairrington co-edited and did the back
cover, as with all of our books.
Lunch and Fired I had lunch with superstar Canadian cartoonist, Cam Cardow yesterday. Here we are. I'm the wide one, he's the thin one. It was actually the first time I have met Cam, who is famously reclusive. I had a huge plate of Mexican food and Cam had a tiny bowl of soup, which goes a long way to explaining the wide and thin thing. Dave Astor of E&P is reporting that Stuart Carlson, the long time cartoonist for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, has been forced out of his job. Carlson, whose work appeared on our site some years ago, has worked for the Journal-Sentinal for 25 years. He was recently asked to draw more local cartoons and said his ratio of local to national cartoons had soared to 70%/30%. Cartoonists often say that the secret to keeping an editorial cartooning job is to draw more local cartoons - that didn't seem to work here. At one time the Journal-Sentinal was noteworthy for having two editorial cartoonists on staff, until they laid off cartoonist Gary Markstein, who continues to draw without a newspaper, as Carlson will do - that seems to be what happens when cartoonists are laid off, they keep drawing anyway. I enjoyed the panel at Comic Con. I had arch-conservative Michael Ramirez speak immediately after arch-liberal Mr. Fish - it amused me to see them adjacent to each other. We had a nice crowd of probably 275 people, which is impressive considering that the people could have chosen to be in another room hearing about the exciting, upcoming season of Stargate Atlantis.
Another Job Loss
Dwayne Powell of the Raleigh News & Observer resigned today. He had been laid off and offered a part-time job of drawing three local cartoons a week for the newspaper, but he decided to turn that down. Dwayne, who had been employed at the newspaper for close to thirty years, will continue to draw national cartoons in syndication and his cartoons will continue to appear on our site. Don Wright, the Pulitzer winning cartoonist for the Palm
Beach Post took a buyout today. There is no news yet on whether
he will continue to draw only for syndication.
Why The New Yorker's Obama Cover is a Lousy Cartoon
In an interview on the Huffington Post Web site, New Yorker Editor David Remnick argues, "Obviously I wouldn't have run a cover just to get attention -- I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say. What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about both Obamas' it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama's supposed 'lack of patriotism' or his being 'soft on terrorism' or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office. "The idea that we would publish a cover saying these things literally, I think, is just not in the vocabulary of what we do and who we are... We've run many many satirical political covers. Ask the Bush administration how many." Cartoonist Barry Blitt defends the cover by saying, "It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is." So the cover cartoon is simply an exaggeration of the allegations against the Obamas.
Cartoonists have a great advantage over journalists in that we can draw whatever we want. We can put words into the mouths of politicians that the politicians never said. Cartoons can be outrageous in their exaggeration; we draw things that never happened, and never could happen -- but we have a contract with the readers who understand that we're drawing crazy things that convey our own views. The New Yorker's Obama cover fails to keep that contract with readers. Cartoonists don't exaggerate anything just because we have the freedom to do so; we exaggerate to communicate in a way that our readers understand. There is no frame of reference in The New Yorker's cover to put the scene into perspective. Following the rules of political cartoons, I could fix it. I would have Obama think in a thought balloon, "I must be in the nightmare of some conservative." With that, the scene is shown to be in the mind of someone the cartoonist disagrees with and we have defined the target of the cartoon as crazy conservatives with their crazy dreams. Since readers expect cartoonists to convey some truth as we see it, depicting someone else's point of view in a cartoon has to be shown to be someone else's point of view, otherwise it is reasonable for readers to see the cartoon as somehow being the cartoonist's point of view, no matter how absurd the cartoon is. That is where The New Yorker's cover cartoon fails. I reserve the right to be as offensive
as I want in my cartoons, and to exaggerate however I please
-- but I want my cartoons to work, to be good cartoons. A cartoon
that fails to communicate its message in a way that readers understand
is nothing more than a bad cartoon. The Long, Agonizing Death of Newspapers Can be Funny! Recently the Tribune Company announced that they were reviewing the productivity of reporters at their various newspapers, with an eye toward making sure that reporters generate 600 pages of text per year. Some newspapers, like the Orlando Sentinel, have reporters who generate lots of pages of text, and some, like the Los Angeles Times, have reporters who generate relatively few pages per year. This struck me funny, and I drew the cartoon below with Tribune Company CEO, Sam Zell, implementing his policy with ten thousand monkeys at typewriters. The cartoon created a stir at the LA Times newsroom, where some reporters printed it out in a large size and posted it in the newsroom for all to enjoy.
Tribune also announced cuts in their news coverage and number of pages, declaring that their newspapers would soon consist of 50% advertising (not counting the classified section and advertising inserts which would, of-course, make the newspapers well more than 50% advertising). Many editorial cartoonists face the argument that editorial cartoons must be cut, because cartoons "generate no income" that is, with no ad attached to the cartoon, it is hard to say how much profit the cartoon generates. Our own Bob Englehart, cartoonist for the Tribune Company's Hartford Courant newspaper, responded to Tribune's announcement by circulating the gag cartoon below. Bob included the caption: "As of June 22, Englehart cartoons will be 50% advertising."
I'll get my people on it.
We've just added six new cartoonists to the site!
I'm happy to welcome Victor to the site.
See
Victor's archive. E-mail
Victor.
 Martin Kozlowski
is the ringleader of the Inx.com
group. He also draws in an editorial cartoon/illustration crossover
style, but Martin has a comic book flair to his work.
E-mail
Martin. See
Martin's archive.
I just added three more cartoons to the George Carlin at the Pearly Gates Yahtzee below. Editorial Cartoonists Convention in
San Antonio Here's a good looking batch of editorial cartoonists, from left to right, Dick Locher, Mike Lester, Adam Zyglis, Bruce Plante, Jeff Parker, Steve Kelley and me. I'm in San Antonio for the annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. The convention had the smallest turnout in memory, as cash-strapped newspapers are no longer paying for cartoonists to attend conventions, and the cartoonists worried about their financial prospects in uncertain times. The AAEC is having money troubles too. I'm sorry to see the way things are going - but the convention was fun, and it is always great to see old friends and commiserate. I'll post more about the convention in coming days. One of the seminars included a juror and a board member from the Pulitzer Prize committee, talking about their process for picking the Pulitzers for editorial cartoonists. It was interesting, and troubling, to see these guys struggle with the transition of readers from newspapers to the web, clinging to their old notions. Only newspaper cartoonists are eligible for Pulitzer Prizes, but the Pulitzer board wants to acknowledge the internet, so they will consider cartoonists who work on the web for their newspaper sites and also have cartoons printed on paper that led to the unpopular choices last year, of animated web cartoons from newspaper cartoonists for the winner and two runners up. Of-course, the top news sites are not newspaper web sites, with the top three, Yahoo News, MSNBC.com and Google News leading the way, and with newspaper sites far behind. The top animated political cartoonists often have no association with newspaper sites, like acclaimed cartoonist Mark Fiore. With newspapers dropping their cartoonists, most editorial cartoonists will soon we working primarily on the web. These Pulitzer guys didn't seem to have a good grasp of modern cartooning. Newspaper people cling to the idea that
they are "transitioning" to the web, as they pour resources
into their web sites, but newspapers are marginal players on
the web, and I don't see anything on the internet that stands
a chance of replacing the revenue newspapers are losing in advertising.
Much of the discussion at the convention was about the hopeless
situation newspapers find themselves in, and the poor decisions
that are going into the "transition to the web." It
is easy to see the old thinking that goes into these lousy decisions,
listening to the guys from the Pulitzer board discuss their own
"transition to the web."
... You and lots of other cartoonists drew a memorial cartoon of George Carlin at the Pearly Gates. Carlin was a very vocal atheist and the question sometimes comes up about what the cartoonist has in mind by drawing a memorial cartoon featuring dead celebrity in a religious scene from a religion the celebrity didn't choose. There was a lot of commentary about this when George Harrison died, and was depicted so often at the Christian Pearly Gates. Does the cartoonist's religious view trump the celebrity's religion in an obituary cartoon? For a Christian cartoonist, who believes that his own religion is the only correct religion, is an obituary cartoon an opportunity to show that the celebrity's religious views were wrong - as the dead celebrity would surely know by now, as he is really at the Pearly Gates right now? Thanks, Daryl, Firstly, I am not sure I have ever said through conversation or my cartoons that as "a Christian cartoonist, (I) believe that (my) own religion is the only correct religion..." and, frankly, I resent the implication. However, I will try and respond to your question regarding this specific cartoon. I did, indeed, mean George Carlin at the Pearly Gates as an irreverent commentary within the cartoon. I readily admit I have drawn my fair share of pearly gates and crying mascots in the past. But recently I have tried to take my inspiration from the obit cartoons of Pat Oliphant. When he does do them he places them in some kind of context of the persons life and impact. With George Carlin, (of whom I consider myself a fan), his contribution to comedy and social discourse was to tear down the walls of conformity and ridicule the overly serious. His anti-religion screeds grew longer and more serious near the end. Hence, a cartoon I hoped would be viewed as irreverent. At least to those familiar with the subject. I trust this answered your question. God bless you, - Scott
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August
1, 2008
Cable
news channels and bloggers are buzzing about The New Yorker magazine
cover featuring Barack Obama dressed in Muslim garb and Michelle
Obama with an afro and machine gun, doing a "terrorist fist
bump" in the Oval Office, while an American flag burns in
the fireplace. The cartoon by Barry Blitt drew immediate condemnation
from the Obama and McCain camps.
There
are rules to political cartoons that allow cartoonists to draw
in an elegant, simple, shorthand that readers understand. Exaggeration
is a well worn tool of political cartoonists; we use it all the
time. I've drawn 
Victor Ndula draws
for the Nairobi Star in Kenya. Victor writes:
I met Jianping Fan on my recent trip to
China. He hails from Guangzhou (formerly Canton) in steamy Southern
China. The cartoonists in Guangzhou seem to have more freedom
than cartoonists in other parts of China, because they live near
Hong Kong where the Chinese are used to seeing much more of the
news on TV than elsewhere in China - I think Jianping's work
shows that freedom and is pretty worldly-wise. 
Sergey Elkin works
from Moscow and his cartoons appear in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
As Sergei puts it: "Mostly I draw Putin."
