Editorial cartoonists’ firings point to steady decline of opinion pages in newspapers
NEW YORK — Even during a year of sobering economic news for media companies, the layoffs of three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists on a single day hit like a gut punch.
The firings of the cartoonists employed by the McClatchy newspaper chain last week were a stark reminder of how an influential art form is dying, part of a general trend away from opinion content in the struggling print industry.
Losing their jobs were Jack Ohman of California’s Sacramento Bee, also president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists; Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. Ohman and Siers were full-time staffers, while Pett worked on a free-lance contract. The firings on Tuesday were first reported by The Daily Cartoonist blog.
“I had no warning at all,” Ohman told The Associated Press. “I was stupefied.”
McClatchy, which owns 30 U.S. newspapers, said it would no longer publish editorial cartoons. “We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the chain said in a statement.
There’s a rich history of editorial cartooning, including Thomas Nast’s vivid takedowns of corrupt New York City politicians in the late 1800s and Herbert Block’s drawings of a sinister-looking Richard Nixon in The Washington Post.
At the start of the 20th century, there were about 2,000 editorial cartoonists employed at newspapers, according to a report by the Herbert Block Foundation. Now, Ohman estimates there are fewer than 20.
The last full-time editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer was Jim Morin of the Miami Herald in 2017. Since then, owing to the diminishing number of employed cartoonists, the Pulitzers have broadened the category in which they compete and renamed it “Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.”
While written editorials can sometimes be ponderous and intimidate readers, the impact of a well-done cartoon is instantaneous, Pett said.
“Usually when you look at an editorial cartoon, it’s (done by) some guy like you who is pissed who can draw,” he said. “It’s just relatable.”
