Go, Read: State of Editorial Cartooning

Here's a measure of how bad things are in editorial cartooning: I can't even tell if this particular essay on the state of editorial cartooning that employs David Wallis' Killed Cartoons as its springboard is brand new or a re-posting of something from the recent past.

Whether or not I'm reading it for the first time or reading it with different eyes, I like the article. It brings the figures, noting that in the last 50 years full-time editorial cartoonists have fallen from 275 to 84. It provides some humor, with lines like "That means that a baby born today is roughly five times more likely to play in the NBA than draw full-time for a newspaper." And it interprets the trends, by noting that sizable newspapers as well as smaller ones are dumping their editorial positions.

Its strongest point, though, is in its tacit admission that the trend has less to do with comics specifics and more to do with a shift in newspaper culture and journalistic emphasis coming home to roost. I don't believe as Wallis is quoted as saying that this is an issue of political timidity so much as a broader change newspapers have made in the last 50 years to take on a role as a provider of services as opposed to affirming their place as a civic institution with certain responsibilities. I think that change was forced on a lot of newspapers as television advertising rose and radio retrenched as a local alternative market to market, and also because of general cultural tendencies away from a valuation for trenchant criticism. When editorial cartooning is turned into a feature, as opposed to a bayonet on the end of a rifle that is a paper's editorial mission and role in the community, it works into the fabric a bizarre counter-value that ultimately devalues the entire profession in the eyes of too many readers.
 
posted 3:10 am PST | Permalink
 

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