Tag: editorial cartoons

Another Editorial Cartoonist Gone

andertoons2 Comments

Curtis

Fellow Chicago area cartoonist Stacy Curtis was unceremoniously escorted out of his job at the NWI Times yesterday.

Curtis was allowed only his car keys, coat and what he brought in with him that day. This weekend he’ll be allowed back under the supervision of two managers to collect any other personal belongings.

LIke Kirk Anderson’s before him, I guarantee this paper spends more on executive office plant watering services than it did on Curtis’ insightful local perspective.

In an era where readership is down and graphic novels sales continue to rise you’d figure the whole damn paper would be told in cartoons!

Honestly maybe it’s for the best. The newspaper in general is slowly dying, and although this will sound callous, maybe it’s better to get out now.

I was “reorganized” out of a job a few years ago and it allowed me the opportunity to refocus and really get down to my life’s work. (I’d like to clarify that this in no way gives any credit to the dirtbag management who actually hired someone to let me go.)

My advice to Stacy is to take the weekend and wallow in it. It sucks. A lot! Then, Monday morning, sit down at your desk, draw some more amazing stuff, work the phones and create your legacy. You’ve got the chops man, screw the NWI Times.

Later – E&P had this to say…

Technorati Tags: ,

Hiroshima Cartoon Blows Up On Cartoonist

andertoons

Here’s a reaction to the Rob Rogers Hiroshima cartoon flap…

“The very fact that many of your readers would not be alive today if their ancestors were killed during an extended war should have made your editorial team think twice about printing this irresponsible cartoon.”

This sort of thing really irritates me. They might as well say that they fought for freedom, as long as it’s freedom they agree with.

Editorial Enforcing

andertoons

There’s such a good article about editorial cartooning today by cartoonist Rob Rogers in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette!

(Often articles like this are cleansed after a certain amount of time at newspaper sites, so I’m taking the liberty of quoting liberally from it here in the hopes that I can help keep some of this stuff floating around online for years to come.)

…as one of the Post-Gazette’s two editorial cartoonists, it is my job to push boundaries and make people think.

Editorial cartoonists are like visual op-ed columnists. They express their own opinion on pages designed to house a variety of opinions. There are liberal cartoonists and conservative cartoonists. Nobody would expect George Will to take a liberal viewpoint. He’s a conservative columnist who gets paid to express his conservative view. Yet I receive calls and letters all the time asking why I don’t draw something with a more conservative bent.

Yeah! how come you never hear about liberals bitching like this?

I am lucky to work for a paper with editors and a publisher who have an appreciation of the value of good, sometimes tough, editorial cartoons and the courage to use them. Not all newspapers are like that; not all readers are so well-served.

That is so true. Don’t forget, this paper has two, count ’em, two editorial cartoonists! You folks in Pittsburgh are damn lucky.

I love my job. I love getting out of bed and going to work everyday. (OK, the getting out of bed part isn’t fun, but the going to work is.) I get to spend my day filling a rectangular box with my opinion, humor and caricatures of newsworthy people (sometimes as a monkey). Some days I hope to be poignant. Other days I just hope to be funny. The best days are when I can be both.

Good stuff right? Go read the whole thing!