Tempers run short in turbulent times, so it is no surprise that provocative editorial cartoons sometimes get blowback from readers. Cartoons generate angry conversation on social media, but they seldom generate complaints to us, or to the newspapers that run them – unless there is an organized campaign to solicit complaints. These campaigns usually take the form of Facebook pages that demand that an editor or cartoonist is punished, or simply demands an apology, and newspapers are often quick to apologize.
The offending Antonio Antunes cartoon that lost a job for CagleCartoonist Patrick Chappatte, crushed a little syndicate and lost a top venue for all editorial cartooning as the New York Times banned cartoons.
Earlier this month there was yet another complaint campaign about a Gary McCoy cartoon in the Florence SC Morning News. This longtime CagleCartoons subscribing paper prints just about every cartoon that opposes abortion rights and there aren’t a whole lot of those, so when one pops up it is no surprise that it gets ink in Florence. The abortion topic doesn’t mix well with Black Lives Matter (I thought the cartoon was offensive myself) and the paper apologized, going the New York Times route of announcing that they are no longer running any editorial cartoons at all. They still like our columnist Michael Reagan though, so they continue to be a good subscriber and we hope to woo them back with more, great conservative cartoons. (Those anti-abortion cartoons are pretty hard to resist in Florence.)
There are more recent examples with cartoons from cartoonists who aren’t represented by my little syndicate generating complaints campaigns and newspaper apologies, but I’m not posting them here because, well, they aren’t represented by my little syndicate.
This is the new normal:
1. A reader is offended by a cartoon she disagrees with in her local newspaper and puts up a Facebook campaign soliciting complaints demanding an apology, the firing of the editor and/or the firing of the cartoonist.
2. The Newspaper apologizes for their poor choice of cartoon; or they stop running all cartoons. No other newspapers get complaints about the cartoon, only the one paper that has a campaigning reader gets complaints.
Here are the ten most popular cartoons of the week (May 30 -June 6, 2020). Our Top Ten is a measure of how many of our subscribing newspaper editors choose to reprint each of our cartoons, from the 63 cartoonists in our syndication package. Just about half of America’s daily, paid circulation newspapers subscribe to CagleCartoons.com.
Getting cartoons in front of readers is one of the goals of every cartoonist. Regrettably, many of our cartoonists get few or no reprints, especially the foreign cartoonists. 20% of the cartoonists get 80% of the sales and reprints, and most of the cartoonists never make it into the Top Ten.
Congratulations to Jeff Koterba of The Omaha World-Herald for the #1 most reprinted cartoon this week. Dave Granlund was a close second. Congrats also go to Dave Fitzsimmons of The Arizona Daily Star, and Bruce Plante of The Tulsa World, who each have two cartoons in the Top Ten. I was happy to see Milt Priggee make his first appearance in the Top Ten this week. Kudos also go to the rest of the artists with the most reprinted cartoons: Rick McKee, John Cole, and Dave Whamond.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
Dave Fitzsimmons takes the #10 spot with his second of two cartoons in the Top Ten this week.
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Here are the ten most popular cartoons of the week (May 9 -May 16).
The big winner this week is Jeff Koterba of The Omaha World Herald, who has the most popular cartoon of the week and dominates with four cartoons in the top ten – an impressive performance that has never been matched. With the #2 cartoon, and two cartoons in the top ten, is Dave Granlund. Special congratulations to Bill Day who is making his first appearance in the Top Ten this week.
Our top ten is a measure of how many of our subscribing newspaper editors choose to reprint each of our cartoons, from the approximately 60 cartoonists in our syndication package. 20% of the cartoonists get 80% of the sales and reprints, and most of the cartoonists never make it into the Top Ten. If you don’t like the top ten, take it up with your local newspaper editor. Just about half of America’s daily, paid circulation newspapers subscribe to CagleCartoons.com.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
The 6th most popular cartoon of the week is this one by Jeff Koterba, who has a whopping FOUR cartoons in the top ten this week.
#7
The seventh most popular cartoon is the unprecedented fourth cartoon from Jeff Koterba.
#8
The eighth most popular cartoon this week is the second cartoon in the Top Ten from Dave Granlund. This is also the only Top Ten cartoon that is not about the pandemic.
#9
This cartoon marks Bill Day‘s first appearance in the Top Ten.
#10
This cartoon is from Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News.
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Cartoon by CagleCartoonist, Dave Whamond from Canada
May 12, 2020
Congressman Salud Carbajal
District Office
Santa Barbara, CA
Dear Congressman Carbajal,
… I run a constituent small business in Montecito, Cagle Cartoons, Inc., that syndicates editorial cartoons and columnists. About half of America’s daily, paid-circulation newspapers subscribe to our service that you can see at CagleCartoons.com.
Journalism has been in decline for years, but the newspaper industry now faces sudden extinction with the pandemic as newspaper advertising revenue has crashed. A large percentage of our subscribing newspapers have simply stopped paying their bills; a good example is our local Santa Barbara News-Press that has run our cartoons and columns on their editorial page on most days for over 14 years – they are now seven months behind in their payments.
Industry experts predict that as many as two thirds of newspapers may not survive the pandemic. We saw the stock price of Gannett, the largest newspaper chain, drop from over $10/share to under a dollar in a matter of months (USA Today runs our cartoons). The loss of newspapers would also sink the editorial cartooning profession and our small business along with it.
Cartoon by CagleCartoonist, Bill Day
Our Web site, Cagle.com, is the face of the editorial cartooning profession to the world and we suffer for that as press freedoms around the world are in decline. Humorless despots hate seeing themselves in our cartoons and our sites are targets of sophisticated hacker attacks that clearly come from state actors. Although America benefits by demonstrating our values around the world through journalism and editorial cartoons, the US government does little or nothing to support editorial cartoonists and other journalists who suffer from foreign attacks.
We received an SBA PPP loan in the amount of $10,600.00; we applied for a very much larger loan based on our expenses which mainly consist of royalties to our artists and our tech expenses that are bloated by defenses against foreign hacker attacks. Our small business is unusual in that we have only two employees, our income from newspapers is broadly distributed to our contributors and the loan amount was not based on our actual expenses, it was based only on the salaries of our two employees, me and my bookkeeper. We have over 75 great cartoonists and columnists, who depend on us, who were ignored in the process because their income is reported on 1099s. The PPP program was not designed for us.
By CagleCartoonist Michael Kountouris from Greece
For many years I traveled around the world giving lectures through the US State Department Speaker Program. In nations without press freedoms, audiences were shocked to see how American cartoonists were free to criticize their government. Well more than half of the world’s population lives in countries where cartoonists are not allowed to draw their nation’s leader. The Speaker Program was effective in spreading our values and promoting press freedom. American editorial cartoonists are seen as stars around the world where we are well respected, like American astronauts, basketball players and jazz musicians. These effective State Department lecture programs have stopped featuring American editorial cartoonists during the Trump administration.
The impending collapse of journalism is a national tragedy that threatens our democracy. The newspaper industry has been lobbying in Washington seeking government support that is unlikely to happen during the Trump administration which has shown hostility to press criticism – criticism that is strongest and most visible among editorial cartoonists. If Democrats win the White House, I fear that any support for journalism may not include small syndicates and press services because our businesses are unusual. We are likely to be overlooked, as we were with the PPP program.
When legislators think of journalists they don’t think of editorial cartoonists. Editorial cartoonists are journalists. We are important. Don’t forget us.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
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We’ve made some changes to the front page of our syndicate site, CagleCartoons.com that will affect our contributing artists. Here is my latest Bloomberg cartoon that I will use an an example below.
I’ll use my recent Bloomberg cartoon as an example of the changes on CagleCartoons.comThis is the revised front page of CagleCartoons.com, our syndicate download site for editors, as it appear today.
The CagleCartoons.com site is the core of our little business. This is where our subscription customers get their cartoons and columns; these are mostly daily, paid-circulation newspapers in the USA who put our content on their editorial pages. (If you only read our blog and Cagle.com you may want to read no further, as this doesn’t affect you. This may be a bit wonky for most readers.)
–The Issues and the Changes
We’re the only syndicate that has their client download site (CagleCartoons.com) available for everyone to see. We’ve been addressing some nagging issues with how we deliver the cartoons on the site. Most editors only look for what is new on the front page of the site and don’t consider older cartoons in our vast database. Often (such as every Thursday) we had too many new cartoons for the front page and cartoons that were loaded early in the day were gone later in the day, pushed out by the newest contributions. Unless an editor visited twice a day, she wouldn’t see all of the new cartoons –and most editors don’t visit every day.
In general, 20% of the cartoons get 80% of the reprints. In other words, editors don’t like 80% of the cartoons, and with all of the cartoons rushing to leave the front page, too many editors complained that they were not seeing enough cartoons they liked.
We encourage our cartoonists to submit black and white versions of their cartoons, because cartoons designed for black and white look better than color cartoons converted to grayscale where some colors come out too dark and cartoons often flatten to a dull gray. The many black and white duplicate versions of the cartoons were taking up front page space that now goes to displaying more color versions of cartoons. The black and white images are now available on the “preview” download pages of the color “parent” cartoon.
We encourage cartoonists to upload their cartoons in a higher resolution than the cartoonists prefer, and we encourage cartoonists to save their work in tiff format, which is not “lossy” like jpg and png formats. (Editors prefer jpg).
Cartoons should be archived in tiff format, so there is no loss to the original. We see our archive as a library and we want to treat the original cartoon files like historical documents that deserve to be preserved without loss –as high resolution tiff files.
We also encourage artists to save their work in CMYK format so their black lines are crispy and the cartoons don’t suffer from bad printing with poor registration. Editors prefer RGB. Until now editors have had to suffer from cartoons in different formats as the unruly herd of cartoonist/cats saved their work in different formats, now editors can download the tiff files as jpg files.
Trump-Friendly, Popular, and the World …
Some time ago, in response to complaints from Trump-supporting editors, we added a section near the top of the page called TRUMP FRIENDLY CARTOONS. This went a long way to dealing with the complaints from red state editors. We recently added a new section called POPULAR CARTOONS that pushed the WORLD CARTOONS section down the page below the fold; the purpose of the new section is to keep the most popular cartoons on the front page longer so editors don’t miss what they want most. The TRUMP FRIENDLY CARTOONS are often among the most popular cartoons with editors. We won’t put the same cartoons in both sections so they won’t be shown twice (or three times) on the front page, so if a TRUMP FRIENDLY cartoon is also a POPULAR CARTOON, it will appear only in the TRUMP FRIENDLY section.
The POPULAR CARTOONS aren’t really “trending” in the internet sense, because readers tend to like different cartoons than editors. In general, editors prefer funny cartoons that don’t express a strong point of view, while readers on the Web respond most to cartoons that pull no punches and reinforce their existing points of view. We still have all kinds of cartoons, strong and soft, left and right, but we’re making it easier for editors to see cartoons they prefer on our site. After all, this site is designed for ease of use by editors. (Cagle.com is designed for readers.)
We love the world cartoonists, but American editors don’t, and these are the least downloaded cartoons by our newspaper subscribers –so we’ve pushed the WORLD CARTOONS down the page –they are still there, and there are just as many of them displayed.
The black and white versions of cartoons are no longer taking up spots on the front page, they are displayed on the preview pages of their accompanying “parent” color versions that editors see when they choose to download cartoons after logging in. Cartoons that exist only as black and white will still appear on the front page.
This is an example of an image preview or download page on CagleCartoons.com today, this is our syndicate download site for editors, as it appear today. This is what editors see after they log in, giving them options to download the high resolution version of the cartoon in different formats.
Preview Page Changes
Clicking on any thumbnail image on the site brings up a “preview page” that looks different for editors who have logged in. An example of what editors see is at the right.
Editors have many options for downloading cartoons, they can download the high resolution images to their device, or email the cartoon to themselves, or to another email address. They can also choose to receive different versions of the cartoons. I upload my cartoons in CMYK tiff format, which is “non-lossy” and best for some kinds of printing. Editors prefer RGB jpg format which is what they are used to getting from photo services like AP. Now editors can download in tiff, jpg and png formats, as CMYK or as RGB if the cartoonist saved her cartoon in CMYK format, as we recommend and as few cartoonists do.
When cartoonists prepare a separate black and white version of a color cartoon, it now appears as a “related variation” only on the preview page for editors to download, rather than with the thumbnails on the front page and in searches. In general, when a black and white version of a cartoon is available, one third of the downloads for the cartoon are for the black and white version.
In the future we may make other variations available to editors on the preview pages, such as foreign language versions or different dimensions that cartoonists may want to do, or such as a taller version or wider version.
Newspaper editors hate when cartoonists use dirty words, but many cartoonists love dirty words which are commonplace on the Web. We’re considering allowing cartoonists to do “dirty word versions” of their cartoons that would be available as variations since there is so much demand for that among the cartoonists. We haven’t quite convinced ourselves do that yet, since most of our subscribers are traditional newspapers. Maybe we will.
We’re also considering adding a feature that will allow editors to select the resolution of the cartoon they download. For now, the resolution of the cartoon is displayed on the preview page. Sometimes we get complaints about cartoons that artists uploaded in low resolution (this is more often a problem with the world cartoonists who have a harder time accepting higher resolution). Unfortunately, it does no good to try to increase the resolution of a low resolution original; this option is only good for resizing cartoons to lower resolutions or dimensions, which would be helpful for Web clients.
Editors can see the resolution on the preview page so they won’t be surprised after downloading the cartoon. There is more demand for higher resolution cartoons now as new devices have higher resolution displays and as better printing processes demand more from cartoon files that are blown up as illustrations.
That’s it for now. More changes will be coming soon!
We need your support for Cagle.com (and DarylCagle.com)! Notice that we run no advertising! We depend entirely upon the generosity of our readers to sustain the site. Please visit Cagle.com/heroes and make a contribution. You are much appreciated!
Nearly twenty years ago I started my CagleCartoons.com syndicate; Mike was one of the first cartoonists to join our group and Mike’s brilliant work was a very important boost for us as we were starting up. Mike had a unique, expressive style and I really appreciated his support in our early days. Mike drew for The Baltimore Sun from 1972 to 2004. He joined CagleCartoons in 2002, drawing for syndication for seven years after he left The Baltimore Sun.
Mike pulled no punches in syndication, blasting George W. Bush from the left. Mike drew with a profound sense of morality. His art is bold and funny. Mike was a liberal champion of the downtrodden. He was an all-around great cartoonist!
Here’s a quote from Mike, from an obit in the Baltimore Sun, “It’s not enough to simply depict opposing factions. It’s good to pick a fight. But it’s not noble or courageous; it’s just my job. Any less is pandering to popular opinion. Too many cartoonists value popularity over doing their jobs. I have a long history of angry letters to the editor. One of my proudest is from the general counsel to the National Rifle Association.”
I’m proud to have called Mike my friend. Here are some of Mike’s outstanding cartoons from the archive of Mike’s years with us –the first batch is about newspapers …
This second batch is about Thanksgiving, just because Thanksgiving is coming up this week and there are so many, great Mike Lane cartoons to choose from on all topics …
By now, even many who don’t normally pay attention to inside-journalism stories, have taken notice of the recent decision by The New York Times to cut all editorial cartoons from their international edition. In recent weeks, friends and strangers have messaged, and have even stopped me at coffee shops in Omaha, the city where I draw cartoons for The Omaha World-Herald, to express their frustration at the news.
The fact that readers, even in the Midwest, are vexed about what’s going into the pages of an international newspaper is somehow heartening. But angst, alone, won’t bring back cartoons to countless readers abroad.
Not all that long before this latest unfortunate news, the U.S. edition of the Times would run a weekly roundup of editorial cartoons in their Sunday Review section. In the years before my work was picked up for syndication, I would submit to The Times my latest work. Much of my excitement came in anticipation of going to a local convenient mart to pick up the Sunday Times. But, of course, nothing compared to the exhilaration I felt on those rare occasions when I would open the paper and discover that the editors had chosen one of my drawings. I felt validated, but more so, I felt connected to something bigger…to the “Great Conversation,” as a friend of mine likes to say about weighing in on current events.
The weekly roundup would eventually go away, replaced by a long-form editorial comic. It broke my heart to know that I would never again see my work reprinted in the Times. But I moved on and eventually moved—to Austria. It was during a nearly two year stay in Innsbruck, while drawing remotely for my newspaper in Omaha—that I fell deeply, madly, in love with The International New York Times. Founded in the late 1880’s as The Paris Herald, the newspaper changed owners and names several times before settling on its current moniker in October of 2013. A few months later I found myself drawing from the Alps, a guy from Omaha who had never lived elsewhere and knew almost no German.
The International New York Times allowed me to once again feel connected to something greater than myself. As I took trains throughout Europe, I always—ALWAYS—made sure I had that wonderful friend along for the ride, with its broadsheets like a large bird’s wings, it’s news from around the world, and yes, with its own editorial cartoons.
What a joy to visit an old-fashioned newsstand in Paris and find that beautiful, familiar, New York Times logo peeking out beyond all the French-language publications! Or to linger over her pages at a café in Rome, sipping espresso. And again, to read those cartoons.
Those cartoons were my dessert. And I savored every inked line.
Back stateside this past spring, I was on an early flight from Tucson to Phoenix. Before taking off I’d already spread open that day’s New York Times. Next to me, a young lady began laughing and pointing at my newspaper. I studied the page facing her trying to figure out which article she found to be so funny. Perplexed, I finally asked.
“That,” she said, motioning to indicate the entire newspaper. “You’re reading one of those.”
The young lady in question was smart and well-spoken. When I asked if she reads newspapers, she again laughed and said, “Never.”
“Have you ever even held a newspaper?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Would you like to try?”
I handed her a section of the newspaper, and after she fumbled around, trying to figure out exactly how to fold the pages to make it more convenient to read, she fell silent. For a moment I thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep. Instead, she was deeply immersed in…reading. I almost told her that I was a cartoonist, but didn’t. I did, however, imagine her one day traveling abroad, perhaps stopping by a newsstand at a train station in Berlin, and noticing The International New York Times. Maybe she would pick up a copy, and just maybe she would read an editorial cartoon and feel connected to something greater.
Editorial cartoonists losing their staff jobs has become old news as staff cutbacks at newspaper chains continue, but yesterday was an especially bad day. The Gatehouse chain laid off three staff cartoonists, Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch, Rick McKee of The Augusta Chronicle and Mark Streeter of The Savannah Morning News. They have been regular contributors to our Cagle.com site for close to fifteen years. Gatehouse’s fourth cartoonist, Dave Granlund, was not laid off, apparently because he works under a freelance contract and was not an employee. Beeler and McKee are part of our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate and are among our most popular cartoonists.
Gatehouse is America’s largest newspaper chain in terms of number of newspapers. (Gannett is the largest newspaper chain in term of number of readers.) The three cartoonists who were laid off were part of Gatehouse’s “More Content Now” shared services, distributing their work in internal syndication to all of the Gatehouse newspapers, so their loss will be felt by a large number of newspapers. Even though the value of the creative contribution of the three cartoonists’ work was multiplied across all the newspapers in the Gatehouse chain, making them much more valuable than the other employees laid off in this round of cuts, this cost-cutting move by Gatehouse doesn’t come as a surprise.
Rick tells me he hopes to continue drawing cartoons for the approximately 850 newspapers that subscribe to our syndicate, and I hope the same will be true for Nate. My sincere condolences go out to all three, and I am confident that they will continue to have successful cartooning careers as their work turns in new directions.
Here are the most recent cartoons by Rick McKee of The Augusta Chronicle, Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch and Mark Streeter of The Savannah Morning News.
Here is my cartoon as it appeared today in the Los Angeles Daily News. It is rare for me to see my cartoon in the local newspapers in the vast editorial cartoon desert that is Los Angeles.
The SCNG group subscribes to our Cagle Cartoons package but only prints one traditional editorial cartoon per week, on Sundays; they dropped daily editorial cartoons to run the comic strip Mallard Filmore. The strip takes half the space of an editorial cartoon and is reliably conservative compared to liberal-leaning editorial cartoons, making Mallard a more attractive alternative from the newspapers’ point of view. SCNG also dropped their editorial pages entirely on Mondays and Saturdays; sadly, this is also common. (Fortunately, SCNG runs many more editorial cartoons on their Web sites.) Since only one cartoon per week can make it into print, it is rare for me to see my own cartoon in the local newspaper – of-course, one spot per week is much better than The Los Angeles Times with no spots per week and no editorial cartoons on their Web site.
Newspapers are shutting down editorial page staffs faster than they are dropping editorial pages and this sometimes works to our advantage. When SCNG and BANG consolidated all of their newspapers’ editorial page staffs, we picked up newspapers in the groups that we hadn’t been able to sell to before, so that all the papers in the groups could run the same content. A similar thing happened recently with McClatchy in North Carolina and we picked up two new papers, The Richmond News-Leader and The Durham Herald-Sun so that they can run a common weekly round-up of cartoons, prepared centrally by our brilliant cartoonist Kevin Siers at McClatchy’s The Charlotte Observer.
I’m often asked what the trends are with editorial cartooning, and my rare cartoon in my local newspaper led to this long-winded answer. We will continue to see newspapers dropping their editorial pages, sometimes dropping only two pages per week, and sometimes dropping the editorial pages entirely. I’m told that editorial pages make readers angry, and papers don’t sell advertising on the editorial page, so editorial pages can be viewed as a costly hassle. Editorial cartoons will continue to lose their newspaper homes.
Newspapers will also continue to consolidate and we’ll see editorial page staffs continue to be cut, with regional groups consolidating their editorial staffs from multiple local papers into central locations; ironically, this is good for Cagle Cartoons as our content is so much better than competing syndicate packages that we continue to pick up more papers than we lose to the consolidation trend –which is a little silver lining on a big dark cloud.
#4
By now, even many who don’t normally pay attention to inside-journalism stories, have taken notice of the recent decision by The New York Times to cut all editorial cartoons from their international edition. In recent weeks, friends and strangers have messaged, and have even stopped me at coffee shops in Omaha, the city where I draw cartoons for The Omaha World-Herald, to express their frustration at the news.
Back stateside this past spring, I was on an early flight from Tucson to Phoenix. Before taking off I’d already spread open that day’s New York Times. Next to me, a young lady began laughing and pointing at my newspaper. I studied the page facing her trying to figure out which article she found to be so funny. Perplexed, I finally asked.
