2008 was another terrible year for the business of editorial cartooning. The decline of newspapers continued to take a toll on the profession as more cartoonists than ever lost their jobs. Newspapers who lost cartoonists didn’t refill the positions and cartoonists seemed to be at the top of the cost-cutting list as declines in readership and advertising revenue pummeled the newspaper industry.
Newsrooms across the country have suffered massive cutbacks and it may be that editorial cartoonists are losing their jobs in proportion with other journalists; but since the ranks of employed cartoonists are so small (generally estimated at less than 100 jobs) the cuts seem more dramatic.
The decline in the editorial cartooning business happens at the same time that editorial cartoons are more popular than ever. Cartoonists enjoy a huge audience on the Internet, and the audience for our Cartoonist Index web site (www.cagle.com) continues to grow. Kids who spend all day surfing the web don’t read newspapers; the shrinking readership of newspapers is becoming more elderly. Social Studies teachers around the world use editorial cartons in their classrooms, and are required to teach editorial cartoons for state mandated testing, but the teachers and students use sites like www.cagle.com where they can see hundreds of political cartoons, rather then the local newspaper, where they will probably find only one on any given day.
With only a handful of exceptions, cartoonists don’t get jobs working for web sites in the same way as they did working for newspapers. Web sites don’t subscribe to syndicated cartoonists like newspapers do, so the income of cartoonists is quickly being choked off. Ironically, this is all happening at the same time that cartoonists are doing their best work ever, for a huge audience of fans, and at a time when a troubled world needs political cartoonists more than ever.
Newspapers are putting more resources into their web sites as they see their readership turn to the web, but advertising on the web doesn’t bring in the income that supported newspapers in the past. Also, newspaper web sites don’t have a presence that demands a large audience. The top news sites, like Yahoo! News, MSNBC.com, CNN.com, and Google News all have huge partner sites that drive traffic to them. A typical newspaper site has no reason to exist on the web, and is usually dwarfed by the audience of the local television stations’ news sites.
Some cartoonists are following newspapers down the same web hole, thinking that the future of editorial cartoons is web animation. Although animated editorial cartoons on the Web can be popular and creatively successful, there is an attitude on the web that content should be free and it is rare that a cartoonist can find a paying client for animation on the web. Some cartoonists are working crazy hours, doing blogs and animations for their newspapers’ failing web sites, in an effort to keep their jobs in print.
Even as the business declines, we’re not seeing fewer cartoons. As editorial cartoonists lose their jobs, many of them continue drawing cartoons on a freelance basis, for less money, as a hobby in retirement or a second job. We continue to get flooded with queries from new cartoonists who want to get into the “business” of editorial cartooning. It appears that there will be no shortage of political cartoons, even if all the cartoonists lose their newspaper jobs.
My grim prediction for our cartooning profession is the same as for journalists in general: As we all lose our jobs, we all become freelance bloggers, writing and drawing for a huge audience, on our own, in the evening – after we get home from our real jobs.
– Daryl Cagle
