I’ve written here about quite a few cartoonists who have lost their jobs to newspaper cutbacks – but this is the first time I can remember that I’ve written about a cartoonist losing his job because his newspaper shut down. My buddy, star Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder, finds himself out of a job as his newspaper bites the dust. I put up a special section of Michael’s great work and asked him to give me a few comments below. E-mail Michael at: [email protected] and see his best cartoons here.

It is with a sad heart that the Daily News (Halifax) folded and then was replaced by a free newspaper called the Metro. The Metro does not run editorial cartoons. In fact there is no opinion what-so-ever in Halifax’s free Daily. So when the Daily News folded, so did my job as editorial cartoonist.

It was done quickly and quietly.

On Monday, Feb 10, 2008, we came into work like we do every Monday morning. Chatted, set up our computers for the day’s work, read Monday’s newspaper and a mass email came through telling us there was a meeting at 10:00am. The strange thing was it was 10:15am. Management always gave us at least a few hours notice before scheduling a meeting.

About a minute after the email came through, management came through herding people to the meeting area. Our marketing director told somebody in the middle of a phone interview to hang up the phone and come to the meeting. I had never seen somebody interrupt a phone interview before so it seemed quite urgent.

When we were in place there was a hushed silence as more people came gathered. For a long time there had been rumours that the whole office was moving from its downtown Halifax location to save money. Thinking this was that announcement, I asked, ” Are we moving?” to the senior person beside me loud enough for everybody near us to hear. When I got no reply, I said jokingly, is the Daily News folding? Still I got nothing. My heart sank.

About a minute later Marc-Noel Ouellette, senior vice-president of the Transcontinental’s newspaper group told us as of today the Halifax Daily News has folded. There will be no newspaper the next day. He proceeded to tell us that a new free daily called the metro would take its place. Some people would find employment with the news paper but the vast majority would not.

That was it. It was like a hurricane came in and destroyed our home.

I worked at the Daily News for seven and a half years. It was a good environment to draw editorial cartoons. Editors let me do my work and wanted me to cause a stir each day. They encouraged hard hitting, opinionated work. A rarity at today’s newspapers.

I did land on my feet quickly. I’ve had calls from a number of news sources asking me about my cartoons, mostly local publications outside Halifax. And as much as I feel lucky, I can’t help but mourn the loss of what was one of the best work environments for an editorial cartoonist in North America.

–Michael de Adder

My buddy John Sherffius just e-mailed to tell me he won the Herblock Award for Editorial Cartoons. We’ve put up a special section showing the twelve cartoons that won the prize for John. Want to e-mail your congratulations – or complaints to John? He’s at: [email protected]. And see John’s editorial cartoon archive here.

Castro Resigns

The future of Cuba without Fidel is generating lots of cartoons. On the left, Cuban cartoonist, Ares, who lives in Cuba, has a very different view of the Cuban future than Alen Lauzan, a Cuban who left Cuba for Chilé.

The Ares cartoon on the left is the only drawing of Fidel I’ve ever seen by a Cuban cartoonist in Cuba. Cartoons of Fidel are a taboo in Cuba – although in this case, Ares is making the point that nothing will change; maybe that makes this Fidel drawing go down more smoothly with the communists.

Check out our Fidel Quits cartoons.

From: John Evans

Subject: Why

So you characterize me as a “Monkey” because I don’t like someone’s political beliefs. How disgusting of you.

Typical Liberal Democrat – It’s ok to insult someone as long as they are not a Minority. It’s still an insult and you should apologize.

You are a racist, just because we are conservative and not agree with you, you make us into Monkeys????

What’s wrong with you, where is your open mind, where is your compasion and caring for others?

John

(Phone number deleted)

Why don’t you call my number and call me a Monkey to my face, don’t you believe in what you do?

I wouldn’t say the conservative character in my cartoon is a “monkey” – I’d say he is “evolutionally challenged.” –Daryl

We have a new site! The Cagle Post!

Our new site, CaglePost.com, is born out of years of my frustration with editors who can’t see that cartoons are as powerful, or more powerful, than words. We’ve gathered most of the top newspaper columnists, along with our great selection of top editorial cartoonists, and we mix them together in a continuous, chronological flow, with the new cartoons and columns appearing as soon as they are released. ­ and with cartoons getting equal play on the site with the columns. I think it is already the best news/opinion site on the web.

On The Cagle Post front page the newest columns show up at the top of the middle of the page. In the left column we have a list of each columnist with their most recent column along with archives and RSS feeds for each columnist. At the right we have topics, where you can see a mix of columns and cartoons by topic, and subscribe to a topical RSS feed.

We’ve been beta testing the new Cagle Post site for a couple of months with our newsletter audience and we’ve gotten lots of good advice and ideas from our readers. One thing readers wanted to do was leave comments with each cartoon, and we have some active discussions going for both the columns and cartoons. The most recent comments can be seen on the front page, click on a comment to go to the cartoon or column that is the subject of debate.

We also have a great new slate of free e-mail newsletters, where our readers can subscribe to any or all of the Cagle.msnbc.com cartoonists and their favorite columnists.

Our Cagle.msnbc.com site is growing old; it is still a collection of separate html files that is managed the same way we did it ten years ago. The new Cagle Post site is database driven and gives us a path to upgrade and modernize the Cagle.msnbc.com site. We may combine the two sites in the future, or The Cagle Post may go its separate way, we’re not quite sure, but for now, The Cagle Post is a separate site.

We’ve gotten some complaints from readers who don’t like the one cartoon per column and thumbnail displays on The Cagle Post; they prefer the way we show the cartoons now, by artist, with many cartoons on each page. Don’t worry, our current site and multi-cartoon layout are here to stay; when we upgrade, we won’t be changing the layout you are comfortable with. The Cagle Post site just provides different ways to see the cartoons.

Part of the reason for the redesign was the “Search for a Cartoon” link in the left column here on Cagle.msnbc.com – we haven’t had a good search function for cartoons here because of our archaic setup; the link used to go to our online store at Politicalcartoons.com where we had a nice search script. What happened was, over time, more and more readers found Politicalcartoons.com through this link and preferred the Politicalcartoons.com format for browsing the most recent cartoons. Over time the traffic on Politicalcartoons.com grew to millions of page views and it became clear that people didn’t really want a store – they really just wanted to look at and search for the cartoons in the thumnail, dated format of our store. In fact, the audience on Politicalcartoons.com has grown to the point where it is about the same size as our huge audience on Cagle.msnbc.com – we knew we had to make a change, and that’s why the Cartoon Ticker page on The Cagle Post looks and works just like Politicalcartoons.com.

As time goes by, we’ll be gently nudging our readers to do their pleasure reading on The Cagle Post ticker page, to move them out of our Politicalcartoons.com store and into a different reading room. Don’t worry, any changes to Cagle.msnbc.com will not disrupt your daily routines and will not change the look and feel of our site.

Give The Cagle Post a try – unlike other opinion sites like Townhall.com, our site has no political agenda. We have liberals and conservatives together on the same topics. And we have the best cartoons presented in the way that many of you prefer. Come! Look! Be angry and leave a comment! And subscribe to our new newsletters and RSS feeds!

There’s nothing else like it!

Our new site, CaglePost.com, is born out of years of my frustration with editors who can’t see that cartoons are as powerful, or more powerful, than words. We’ve gathered most of the top newspaper columnists, along with our great selection of top editorial cartoonists, and we mix them together in a continuous, chronological flow, with the new cartoons and columns appearing as soon as they are released. – and with cartoons getting equal play on the site with the columns. I think it is already the best news/opinion site on the web.

On The Cagle Post front page the newest columns show up at the top of the middle of the page. In the left column we have a list of each columnist with their most recent column along with archives and RSS feeds for each columnist. At the right we have topics, where you can see a mix of columns and cartoons by topic, and subscribe to a topical RSS feed.

We’ve been beta testing the new Cagle Post site for a couple of months with our newsletter audience and we’ve gotten lots of good advice and ideas from our readers. One thing readers wanted to do was leave comments with each cartoon, and we have some active discussions going for both the columns and cartoons. The most recent comments can be seen on the front page, click on a comment to go to the cartoon or column that is the subject of debate.

We also have a great new slate of free e-mail newsletters, where our readers can subscribe to any or all of the Cagle.msnbc.com cartoonists and their favorite columnists.

Our Cagle.msnbc.com site is growing old; it is still a collection of separate html files that is managed the same way we did it ten years ago. The new Cagle Post site is database driven and gives us a path to upgrade and modernize the Cagle.msnbc.com site. We may combine the two sites in the future, or The Cagle Post may go its separate way, we’re not quite sure, but for now, The Cagle Post is a separate site.

We’ve gotten some complaints from readers who don’t like the one cartoon per column and thumbnail displays on The Cagle Post; they prefer the way we show the cartoons now, by artist, with many cartoons on each page. Don’t worry, our current site and multi-cartoon layout are here to stay; when we upgrade, we won’t be changing the layout you are comfortable with. The Cagle Post site just provides different ways to see the cartoons.

Part of the reason for the redesign was the “Search for a Cartoon” link in the left column here on Cagle.msnbc.com – we haven’t had a good search function for cartoons here because of our archaic setup; the link used to go to our online store at Politicalcartoons.com where we had a nice search script. What happened was, over time, more and more readers found Politicalcartoons.com through this link and preferred the Politicalcartoons.com format for browsing the most recent cartoons. Over time the traffic on Politicalcartoons.com grew to millions of page views and it became clear that people didn’t really want a store – they really just wanted to look at and search for the cartoons in the thumnail, dated format of our store. In fact, the audience on Politicalcartoons.com has grown to the point where it is about the same size as our huge audience on Cagle.msnbc.com – we knew we had to make a change, and that’s why the Cartoon Ticker page on The Cagle Post looks and works just like Politicalcartoons.com.

As time goes by, we’ll be gently nudging our readers to do their pleasure reading on The Cagle Post ticker page, to move them out of our Politicalcartoons.com store and into a different reading room. Don’t worry, any changes to Cagle.msnbc.com will not disrupt your daily routines and will not change the look and feel of our site.

Give The Cagle Post a try – unlike other opinion sites like Townhall.com, our site has no political agenda. We have liberals and conservatives together on the same topics. And we have the best cartoons presented in the way that many of you prefer. Come! Look! Be angry and leave a comment! And subscribe to our new newsletters and RSS feeds!

There’s nothing else like it!

Thanks to our friends at Editor & Publisher for permission to post this story.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark Danish police said Tuesday they have arrested several people suspected of plotting to kill one of the 12 cartoonists behind the Prophet Muhammad drawings that sparked a deadly uproar in the Muslim world two years ago.

The arrests were made in pre-dawn raids in Aarhus, western Denmark, “to prevent a terror-related murder,” the police intelligence agency said. It did not say how many people were arrested nor did it mention which cartoonist was targeted.

However, according to Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the drawings on Sept. 30, 2005, the suspects were planning to kill its cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. It said those arrested included both Danish and foreign citizens.

“There were very concrete murder plans against Kurt Westergaard,” said Carsten Juste, the paper’s editor-in-chief.

The cartoons were later reprinted by a range of Western publications, and they sparked deadly protests in parts of the Muslim world.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

Westergaard, 73, and his wife Gitte, 66, had been living under police protection because of the murder plans, Jyllands-Posten reported.

“Of course I fear for my life when the police intelligence service say that some people have concrete plans to kill me. But I have turned fear into anger and resentment,” Westergaard said in a statement published on Jyllands-Posten’s Web site.

PET, the police intelligence service, called the action “preventive,” saying it decided to strike “at an early phase to stop the planning and the carrying out of the murder.”

In the uproar that followed the publishing of the cartoons, Danes watched in disbelief as angry mobs burned the Danish flag and attacked the country’s embassies in Muslim countries including Syria, Iran and Lebanon.

Jyllands-Posten was evacuated several times because of threats and posted security guards at its office outside Aarhus and in Copenhagen.

The paper initially refused to apologize for the cartoons, which it said were published in reaction to a perceived self-censorship among artists dealing with Islamic issues, but later said it regretted that the cartoons had offended Muslims.

The Danish government also expressed regrets to Muslims, but noted that it could not interfere with the freedom of the press.

Kasem Ahmad, a spokesman for the Copenhagen-based Islamic Faith Community, a network of Muslim groups that spearheaded protests against the cartoons in Denmark, said he hoped Tuesday’s arrests would not rekindle the uproar.

“We urge Muslims to take it calmly,” he told the TV2 News network.

The rage over the caricatures resonated beyond Denmark. In Germany, two men were accused of planting bombs aboard a pair of German commuter trains in 2006 that failed to explode.

One of the men, Youssef Mohammed el-Hajdib, a Lebanese citizen, is on trial in Duesseldorf. The second man, Jihad Hamad, was convicted in December in Lebanon and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

El-Hajdib told the court last week that Hamad planned the attacks as revenge after some German newspapers reprinted the Muhammad caricatures.

Hamad, however, testified at his trial in Lebanon that el-Hajdib was the initiator of the failed plot. He said el-Hajdib brainwashed him and exposed him to extremist videos and propaganda.

I’m delighted to add Taylor Jones to our site. I think Taylor is the most brilliant caricature artist working today; his caricatures are widely syndicated to newspapers around the world, but what most people don’t know is that Taylor, who lives in Staten Island, NY, is also the editorial cartoonist for the El Nuevo Dia newspaper in Puerto Rico. That’s one of Taylor’s Puerto Rican cartoons below – about Super Tuesday. (Be sure to visit our great SUPER TUESDAY cartoon collection!) E-mail a welcome to Taylor Jones. See Taylor’s archive.

I knew this would happen – I’m getting complaints about the relative sizes of the fish in my Google/Yahoo/Microsoft cartoon. Here is an example:

From: Parker, David

Subject: cartoon for 2/2/08

Good day,

I think you have a minor error with the cartoon for 2/2/08.

If you’re picking the fish size based on search market share, then the Microsoft fish should actually be smaller than the Yahoo fish … if you’re sizing them based on Revenue, then the Microsoft fish should be much larger than all the others!

MS revenue: $51.2B

Google revenue: $16.6B

Yahoo revenue: $6.7B

Food for thought

I get a whole lot of e-mail every day reminding me that size DOES matter. In this case, I’m referring to the relative share of the online search market, where Google controls about 75% of the business. Here the fish are drawn with correct relative volumes – the Microsoft and Yahoo! fish are roughly spherical and the Google fish is flat, viewed from the side. Our readers need to think in three dimensions.

We’ve been getting a crazy reaction to a recent column we syndicated by Tom Purcell. Stark raving crazy readers have been flooding us with email and phone calls complaining about the column below, which makes a tongue-in-cheek argument that Girl Scout Cookies should be banned. We’ve learned that you don’t joke about little girls. If you want to comment on the column, click here.

Considering the flood of e-mail from shallow readers, I asked Tom for a comment:

I’d like to say I was surprised by some of the responses I got to a satirical column that calls for a ban on Girl Scout cookies, but the truth is I wasn’t surprised at all.

The idea in the column below was to poke fun at some of the stridency we see on op/ed pages by folks who lecture the rest of us on what we must do to save the world. You might think it obvious that readers would see the gag — what kind of nut would attack Girl Scouts and demand that their cookie sale be banned to save the environment and protect us from a host of other ills — but a number of readers didn’t see the gag.

Some of the early mail I got came from folks on the left who praised me for being anti-capitalist. Much of the mail came from Girl Scout moms who thought I was dead serious. Some of these folks actually called the editors at their local paper to complain; others called Cagle Cartoons directly. They were mighty angry at this writer and responded to my “attack” on the Girl Scouts point by point. Interestingly, the later mail has come from people who saw the real point of the column and got a kick out of it.

In any event, Cagle’s Sales has a theory as to why many folks missed the gag. Though it’s true readers have misunderstood satirical pieces in their local newspaper in the past — think Mike Royko and Art Buchwald — could it be that these days it’s hard to tell the difference between satire and columnists who really mean what they are writing — who really don’t see the silliness in their point of view and the demands that they’re making on the rest of us? –Tom Purcell

Here is the offending column:

Why Girl Scout Cookies Must Be Banned

By Tom Purcell

The Girl Scout cookie season is upon us. That means one thing. The annual cookie sale must be banned.

How can we allow anyone, in these progressive times, to inflict empty calories on an already obese public?

How can we be so inconsiderate to diabetics and others who are unable to consume sugar?

How can we allow any organization, regardless of its cause, to use children to pimp products loaded with trans fat, the partially hydrogenated oil that Americans fear more than communism?

It is true that the Girl Scouts organization was founded in 1912 to help girls develop physically, mentally and spiritually. I know the annual cookie sale has become a tasty part of American culture since it originated in 1917.

But the fact is this: The annual sale is teaching girls TERRIBLE values.

It is teaching them raw capitalism — how to exploit the weak and the helpless. My own niece, an otherwise sweet and lovely child, knows I can’t help but eat shortbread cookies by the row. I eat Thin Mints as though they were Tic Tacs. I down Peanut Butter Patties the way grizzlies dine on wild salmon.

I’m addicted. But rather than protect me from my addiction, she preys on me. She calls or visits just before dinner — when I am at my most hungry and vulnerable. She tells me about her troop’s good deeds and how my order will fund even more.

The clever little manipulator always walks away with a sizable order.

All Girl Scouts do. They probably meet in private to laugh about the helplessness of their victims — they laugh about the strong-arm techniques they use to part friends, family and neighbors from their hard-earned dough.

In the process, they are destroying our environment. More than 200 million boxes of Girl Scout cookies are sold every year — that’s $700 million in annual revenue. Precious trees must be felled to farm the grains and sugars needed to produce them — trees that are essential to dissipating carbon dioxide.

What’s worse, as those cookies are manufactured, packaged and shipped, more carbon dioxide is pumped into the air. That’s right, the Girl Scouts are causing the Arctic ice cap to melt. The next time you dip a shortbread cookie into a cup of milk, the least you can do is remember the starving polar bears stranded on hideously small ice floes.

That’s why the annual Girl Scout cookie sale must end.

Look, if the Girl Scouts want to teach girls how to market products and manage inventory and money, can’t they be more socially responsible? Instead of selling cookies, why not sell low-energy-consumption light bulbs? Why not sell something that makes the girls aware of man’s thoughtless destruction of our fragile ecosystems?

Better yet, instead of teaching the girls the principles of capitalism, why not teach them how to be government bureaucrats instead? America is moving toward European-style socialism. The careers of the future will be in government, not the private sector. Why not have the government produce a pamphlet on the harmful effects of cookies, then mandate that the girls develop a program to distribute it?

Sure, I know some people will criticize me for demanding an end to the cookie sale. They’ll say that it really does teach girls useful business skills. They’ll say that it’s as much a part of American culture as baseball and apple pie — that we should celebrate it and enjoy it. They’ll say that America has real problems and that I ought to focus on those rather than something as harmless as a lousy cookie sale.

Well, nuts to that. I urge you to write your senator and congressperson. If the Girl Scouts won’t willingly stop foisting their cookie pox on the rest of us, we must use the might of the federal government to mandate a ban on their annual sale.

I hope the ban goes into effect before my niece talks me into placing another order.

If you want to comment on Tom’s offensive column, click here

Here is some cartoon supporting evidence for Tom’s position:

Cartoon by M. e. Cohen, Comment on this cartoon.

Cartoon by Mike Lester of the Rome (GA) News-Tribune, Comment on this cartoon.

Cartoon by Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Comment on this cartoon.