The power of a local editorial cartoonist
Editorial Cartoonist David Fitzsimmons of The Arizona Daily Star ranted Sunday about this field, which seems to be dying a little faster than the rest of the print journalism field:
Cartoonists, right and left, are being erased from newsroom budgets. Kenneling and feeding a rabid local cartoonist seems like a poor bargain when benign drawings scrawled in distant newsrooms about distant topics are available for peanuts.
Therein lies the value of the local cartoon. Occupying a space the size of a Pop-Tart on our nation’s opinion pages, the hometown cartoon is a unique local voice addressing issues.
The New York Times has no staff editorial cartoonist because it views cartoons as a grotesque, low art form that oversimplifies and distorts the truth to convey an opinion.
Bingo! A sharp, unforgettable cartoon does all that in an instant.
A cartoon doesn’t bother to carefully prosecute the accused with arguments. That is the realm of the editorial writer. A good cartoon condemns and executes on the spot.
Fitzsimmons is a great example of the good a local cartoonist can do in a community. Can you imagine the impact this has on a local opinion page?
Here are a couple of recent samples regarding national issues:
Funny stuff. Kudos to David. And kudos to The Arizona Daily Star for continuing to employ him.
Contrast this with The Northwest Daily Herald, in the ‘burbs of Chicago. Not only did they lay off their local cartoonist, they were caught last week bragging about their cartoonist in a TV promo:
David Miner of The Chicago Reader wrote last Friday:
An uncle who hadn’t seen Scott Nychay for a while asked him at a family party a few weeks ago how things were going at work.
The Northwest Herald laid me off last October, Nychay replied. Then why, a puzzled cousin asked, is the Herald bragging about you on TV?
The Herald had featured Nychay in TV ads before. It had put his face on billboards. But this ad he knew nothing about.
It turned out to be a 15-second spot running early in the morning on WBBM TV, the Herald’s “news partner.” Thanks to an understanding between marketing departments, the Herald advertises on WBBM and WBBM advertises in the Herald.
“More than 60 awards in 2005,” the spot says, “including: best-overall news-paper, AP top-ten sports section, and Fischetti editorial-cartoonist honor. Maybe that’s why more people in McHenry County read the Northwest Herald than all other papers combined. The Northwest Herald — closer to home.”
…Monday I got Nychay’s old boss on the phone and asked him to explain the ad. The explanation, in a word, was Whoops!
Chris Krug, group editor of the Herald, the Kane County Chronicle, and other regional papers in the Shaw Newspapers chain, says the ad was created in 2005; an updated version began running last July (a few months before Nychay lost his job) between 5 and 6:30 in the morning — a classic out-of-sight, out-of-mind time slot. “I’m grateful you brought it to our attention,” Krug told me.
“…This was clearly an oversight on our part and not an attempt to gain ground through the work of a former employee.
“I know the ad’s been pulled. It was pulled this morning.”
Nychay did pretty decent work, too. Here’s the only example I can find online, though:
Read the Chicago Reader piece here:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/hottype/070713/
Read Fitzsimmons’ rant in the Sunday Arizona Star:
http://www.azstarnet.com/opinion/191633
Find Fitzsimmons’ cartoon library here:
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/fitz/
See Fitzsimmons’ take on a typical day in the life of an editorial cartoonist here:
http://www.azstarnet.com/kphotos/15%20adayinthelife-g1.jpg
Items on both cartoonists are via Romenesko:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45
July 18th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Given the response that the Herald’s management had to Mike Miner’s column, I think it’s fair to say that there is a second side to that story.
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12727
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
A cartoonist I really adore is Jeff Parker of FLORIDA TODAY. It’s so invaluable to have a local cartoonist when something happens that really touches our community. Two of my favorites of Jeff’s were when FLAT’s longtime columnist Milt Salamon died, he showed a cartoon of Milt’s empty desk with various gadgets and local fauna and statues (people would write to him to ask the origins of strange local phenomena) mourning him.
Another was after Columbia exploded, obviously a huge deal to everyone on the Space Coast. We called it “our 9/11.” It was of the shuttle passing through the pearly gates of heaven, with 8 bright stars in the sky — and one Star of David for the Israeli astronaut.