Editorial cartoons find new life in new media

     by Steve Hallock

     An editorial cartoon hanging on my office wall depicts a bust of a woman, her nude derriere facing the reader. She is headless, suggesting ancient Greek or Roman statues.

     Her breasts are bare, but there is something odd, even Picasso-esque about her. One of her breasts is on the front of her body; the other is on the back. The sign on the base of the bust reads: "Woman: By the engineers who built Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant."

     The 1981 Paul Conrad cartoon published in the Los Angeles Times is a devastating commentary on nuclear energy. The cartoon is worth a thousand words. It presents a visual argument that an op-ed columnist might spend that many words on discussing the perceived perils of nuclear energy.

     It is, like all well-done editorial cartoons, a caricature of one side of the nuclear energy debate that raged in the 1980s, one in which environmentalists took on the utility companies. The argument, boiled down, had those who feared the possible health and environmental effects of nuclear energy and waste storage on one side and those who boasted of the alternative energy benefits of nuclear power plants on the other.

     The point here is not which side of the nuclear debate is the correct one. Actually, that has yet to be determined. Rather, this cartoon represents another kind of debate currently under way in this nation, a debate centered not on the looming extinction of an endangered species of animal but rather that of a political pundit: the newspaper editorial cartoonist.

     This debate arose in the St. Louis area in December 2003, when St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial cartoonist John Sherffius resigned after he and then-editor Ellen Soeteber reportedly clashed over the cartoonist's depiction of the Republican Party.

     Writing in 2004 of the resignation in the trade magazine Editor & Publisher, College of Charleston Associate Professor of Communication Chris Lamb noted that 25 years ago the nation had about 150 editorial cartoonists "working full-time for newspapers; now there are perhaps half that many."

     Indeed, the number has dwindled even more since then, despite the Post's hiring of a new cartoonist, R.J. Matson last year. The Chicago Tribune has gone without an editorial cartoonist since Jeff MacNelley died in 1999.

     Two other Tribune Company newspapers also have lost editorial cartoonists-a layoff ousted one at the Los Angeles Times and a buyout accounted for another, at the Baltimore Sun. In Pittsburgh, the Post-Gazette laid off cartoonist Tim Menees, the victim of economic downsizing, a newspaper source told me.

     All of which prompted Christian Science Monitor cartoonist Clay Bennett to warn National Public Radio's listening audience last December that while all journalists are an endangered species, "the editorial cartoonist is more like the snail darter, the most endangered."

     Much of this cartoonist downsizing is due to economics. Chicago Tribune Editorial Page Editor Bruce Dold told NPR that politics had little to do with the decisions. He argued that his newspaper publishes hard-hitting columnists and cartoons.

     "You face the question, do you hire an investigative reporter, do you hire a city council reporter, or do you hire a cartoonist," he said.

     He argued that a newspaper can't hire a city council reporter from a syndicate, can't buy an investigative reporter from a syndicate, but it can get a syndicated cartoonist.

     Others, though, while recognizing the economic problems of the newspaper industry, say something more is at work, that the cartoonist's message frequently is the problem.

     Lamb, in his 2004 essay, wrote that the problem goes beyond economics. He blamed editors "who have little appreciation or understanding for political satire. Too many editors want editorial cartoons to be like news stories-fair and balanced. But that's not what editorial cartoons are supposed to do.

     When 'Doonesbury' cartoonist Garry Trudeau was once criticized for being unfair, he responded that 'criticizing a political satirist for being unfair is like criticizing a 260-pound nose guard for being too physical.'"

     Lamb offered a brief synopsis of the historical role of the editorial cartoon's contribution to the political dialogue, from Nast helping to bring down Boss Tweed in New York City to Herb Block (Herblock) caricaturing U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his red-baiting, to Conrad revealing the "diabolical" nature of Richard Nixon.

     Today, Lamb wrote, "as the Bush administration has shamefully questioned the patriotism of its critics, a number of editorial cartoonists nevertheless have had the courage to raise legitimate questions about the administration's war in Iraq."

     Bennett complained to NPR that newspapers fear controversy in these times of hard newspaper economics.

     "They rush to the mushy middle," he said. "They want to be everything to everybody, they don't want to lose even one reader. That may make sense to some accountant, but it doesn't make sense when it comes to creating a newspaper that people want to read."

     Ah, there's the stuff of today's newspaper marketing: giving the public what they want. And here is where publishers and editors might want to think again their banishment of editorial cartoonists.

     The thing is, editorial cartoons-at least the spirit of them, the sort of satire they represent-aren't passé. The sort of political lampoonery found in editorials cartoons is, like other newspaper content, finding new audiences in new media.

     Actually, some of it is not so new; satirizing politics moved into the broadcast medium years ago with Bob Hope and Johnny Carson taking off on politicians and social issues, and it continues today with David Letterman, Jay Leno and other late-night talk show folks who are speaking to what researchers have discovered is a late-night liberal audience.

     "A Senate panel has suggested that FEMA be done away with," Leno quipped one recent evening. "In six to eight weeks when FEMA learns of this they are going to be upset!"

     Viewers can find half-hour long editorial cartoons on cable television nightly. "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart regularly satirizes politicians and public policy, followed by Stephen Colbert and "The Colbert Report." Edgier political and social commentary is found on the same cable outlet, Comedy Central, in "South Park," which routinely parodies social mores, entertainment and political figures.

     So those writing on behalf of the death of the editorial cartoon are, as Twain would suggest, premature in pronouncing the art form dead-at least, halfway premature. The art form simply is spreading to new media-and it is popular fare, which speaks to Bennett's point about creating a newspaper that people want to read.

     People like to laugh. They like their news and opinion with a dash of wit, or sarcasm. An editorial cartoon not only provides humor, but it offers a snapshot opinion that often is more barbed than the sharpest columnist or editorial writer. Barbed? Try the recent reaction in the Muslim world to the Danish cartoons that sparked rioting in some Muslim communities.

     Cartoonists might want to borrow a page from their print brethren and to concentrate more on local issues and leave the national ones to the syndicates and the broadcast wags; in response to the argument by the Tribune's Dold, you can't buy local cartoons from a syndicate. But there remains a place for cartoons nonetheless.

     In their haste toward serving the bottom line and so-called community journalism, newspaper owners and editors ought to keep in mind the popularity of cartoons. Just ask editors of The New Yorker, Playboy and other print media, who demonstrate a much clearer understanding of reader desires and needs these days (including a popular demand for investigative reporting) than do newspaper editors and owners.

     Sadly, these newspaper editors' loss of humor could add to, rather than detract from, reader disenchantment.

     Steve Hallock, a former newspaper editor and editorial writer, is an assistant professor of journalism at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.