For the past six years we’ve enjoyed a partnership with msnbc.com (which recently changed its name to NBCNews.com) and for six years before that, with Slate.com when it was part of the Microsoft Network – all in all, twelve years with Microsoft and MSN.com. I regret to write that our partnership has come to an end.
I was the official “editorial cartoonist” for Slate.com, msnbc.com and NBCNews.com. Of-course, all of the cartoonists that work with us through our Cagle Cartoons syndicate and Politicalcartoons.com were featured on the MSN.com sites, including slide shows on news topics of the day on msnbc.com, the Today Show site and NBC Sports; we did a cartoon week in review and maintained a “CartoonBlog.”
Recently, msnbc.com changed ownership to be run by NBC, and NBC itself recently changed ownership. It isn’t usual these days for cartoons to be cut to save costs, but we were cut for editorial reasons. The reason I was given for our departure was “the new management wants nothing to do with cartoons.” Msnbc.com/NBCNews.com has never had an opinion section, or other opinion content, so it is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.
Readers of our Cagle.com site will see very few changes – the NBCNews.com logo is gone from our header and will be gone from my attribution in my future cartoons. Our site will look the same as always; we’ll continue our syndication business as always at CagleCartoons.com and Politicalcartoons.com.
Our editors at MSN/Slate/msnbc/NBCNews were wonderful to work with all these years; I’ve appreciated their support for our cartoonists and our art form. They loved what we did, let us do what we wanted and were happy with what we wanted to do – the perfect editors! They were great. I miss them already.
The cartoon at the right gave me some trouble. Â I drew it on the second anniversary of 9/11, which seems to have been too soon, as it drew some very angry reaction.
