Them Damn Cartoons

William Maeger Tweed, more famously known as Boss Tweed said, “Let’s stop those damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me—my constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see pictures.”

The pictures he was referring to were cartoons in Harper’s Weekly drawn by cartoonist Thomas Nast, who had drawn over 140 cartoons about the corruption coming out of Boss Tweed’s political machine, Tammany Hall. It was Nast’s cartoons that helped bring down Tweed. Nast is considered the father of American political cartooning although it has come to light that he was a pretty notorious racist as well, but it was the 1800s and your great-grandmother probably still says some uncomfortable things about the Chinese and Irish.

If Boss Tweed was still around today, he’d worry less about the “damned pictures” because fewer and fewer newspapers are running them. Last year, Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the nation (or it was. It’s confusing because hedge funds have started buying hedge funds and they move names around), dropped political cartoons from the opinion pages of all their publications. Yesterday, McClatchy laid off its three last cartoonists stating they will no longer publish political cartoons in any McClatchy newspaper.

All three cartoonists are Pulitzer Prize winners. They are Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee, Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer, and Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader, who was a freelancer after years of being a staffer. Newspaper layoffs have been abundant over the past two decades, targeting various types of journalists, including reporters, photographers, copy editors, etc, etc, but reportedly, McClatchy only went after cartoonists yesterday.

McClatchy opinion editor Peter St. Onge released a statement saying the layoffs were a “continuing evolution” by parent company McClatchy, which will “no longer publish daily opinion cartoons.”

He also wrote, “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.” Ironically, this was NOT a local decision as it came from the hedge fund corporate overlords. But where else can people read cartoons on local issues than in their local newspaper? Oh, yeah…that’s right. Corporate overlords of newspapers don’t care about the content in their publications anymore, especially political cartoons.

I know for a fact that political cartoons are more popular today than they ever were. Reader habits may change when it comes to where they find cartoons, but they haven’t stopped reading them. Decisions like the one made by McClatchy yesterday will chase readers to other platforms.

Political cartoons went from being vital to newspapers to being an unnecessary burden. After I survived my paper’s first round of layoffs, the editor told me I wasn’t necessary to the paper but they decided to keep me around anyway…for now (they got me in the third round). As newspapers failed to adapt to changing times and the internet, and as circulation dropped, they became more skittish about offending readers.

In my final days as a staff cartoonist at The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia, I was doing a caption contest for the paper. This was a unique way to engage readers and have them get involved in a fun way. We would publish a cartoon with an empty speech balloon and let the readers fill it out, then we’d pick our favorite and declare a winner. One week, the subject was Sarah Palin and her daughter. Before we even put words into the cartoon, we got a complaint. One reader, just one, was offended by the cartoon that hadn’t said anything yet. One editor said we should kill the entire contest because one reader was upset. Just one. Fuck all those who played along and submitted captions, the paper was afraid of that one reader.

Over the past few years, I’ve received comments from people telling me that Donald Trump must be great for business. He’s not. I’ve had newspaper editors tell me directly that they were dropping my cartoons because of Donald Trump. This happened more than once and not because of conservative editors trying to defend Trump. A lot of newspapers refused to carry any cartoons on Trump, pro or con.

When my career started in the early 90s, a local jewelry store called my editor and said he was ending all his advertising with the paper because a cartoon of mine that attacked segregation (this was Mississippi, and segregation was still a bit of a thing down there in the 90s. Really). My editor’s response was, “Eh.” He felt it was the price of good journalism and that the money would come back…and it did. The jewelry store’s advertising in the newspaper continued. And this was a weekly paper wielding nowhere near the power and influence of a daily like The Sacramento Bee, Lexington Herald-Leader, or Charlotte Observer. Today, editors are frightened and scared nutless animals.

McClatchy owns a lot of daily newspapers. In addition to the Bee, Herald-Leader, and Observer, it owns The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC), The Kansas City Star, the Miami Herald, The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The State (Columbia, SC), The News-Tribune (Tacoma, WA), and The Wichita Eagle. It also acquired from another chain, then quickly sold, the Akron Beacon-Journal, The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Paul Pioneer Press, and the San Jose Mercury News.

The reason I listed those publications is because each of them used to have a staff cartoonist. Today, none of them have a staff cartoonist. Herblock said, “If the prime role of a free press is to serve as a critic of the government, cartooning is often the cutting edge of that criticism.” But newspapers don’t want cutting-edge anymore and often, they don’t want criticism either.

The Washington Post wrote about the three McClatchy layoffs while it also doesn’t employ a staff cartoonist. When Tom Toles retired, the Post promised to replace him and continue its strong legacy of political cartooning after the two decades of Toles providing amazing and irreverent cartoons, and the many decades of the great Herblock’s work. Instead of giving the daily slot to their freelancer, the brilliant Ann Telnaes, they freelanced it out to a cartoonist from Canada. Recently, they cut him down to one day a week, have contracted Michael Ramirez (who has a job with the Las Vegas Review-Journal) to draw right-wing cartoons for its page, and are also contracting gag cartoonists to replace political cartoons…on its opinion page. GAG CARTOONS….ON IT’S OPINION PAGE!!! AAGH!!! Good job, Bezos.

This is why I’m such a loud annoying proponent of political cartoonists being journalists…because our industry is diminishing our role.

The Pulitzer Prizes have taken away the category for political cartoons, combining it with graphic arts and weather maps. A cartoonist hasn’t won a Pulitzer since 2019. Cagle Cartoons is selling an “anonymous” cartoonist which is a violation of every legitimate journalism outlet’s ethics policy, which means a major cartoon syndicate that should be defending cartoonists is instead telling newspapers we’re not journalists thus their ethics policies don’t apply to us. Counterpoint, a cartoon service, publishes a cartoonist who also works for Russia-owned propaganda outlet Sputnik. MAGAt cartoonists are finding success with cartoons based on lies, bullshit, and conspiracy theories. Several cartoonists have taken up the habit of stealing clip art and tracing photos for their caricatures and passing them off as original artwork, including the vice president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. And finally, a professor at a major university has advocated that newspapers replace political cartoons with internet memes. MEMES! GODDAMNMOTHERFUCKING MEMES! Don’t give Bezos any ideas.

Colleagues, can we stop helping editors and vulture capitalists destroy our industry? Hmm? If we’re not going to live up to the same accountability required by other journalists, then we’re not journalists anymore. Political cartoonists should hold a higher ethical standard for their work than that of Instagram memes.

According to my unofficial count, there are less than 15 cartoonists on the staff of a daily newspaper. I would say the last employed cartoonist should turn off the lights, but the vulture capitalists will probably have the power cut to save a buck long before then.

Disclaimers All three laid-off cartoonists are friends of mine, my cartoons have been reprinted in The Washington Post, The Las Vegas Review-Journal is a former client of mine (dropped me when they hired Ramirez), I was listed as a debtor in McClatchy’s bankruptcy from which I never received payment, and the cartoonists who are tracers, clip-art thieves, anonymous cowards, MAGAts, Russian toadies, and the people who sell them don’t like me very much because I write blogs like this.

Also, I’m part Irish.

Music note: I listened to Pete Yorn.

Signed prints: The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t like PayPal, you can snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402. I can mail the prints directly to you or if you’re purchasing as a gift, directly to the person you’re gifting.

Notes on my book, Tales From The Trumpster Fire: There are 19 copies of my book in stock, which go for $45.00 each, signed. Also, I have copies of my first book from 1997, Knee-Deep in Mississippi available for $20.00.

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