I have been reading both Time and Newsweek for years and they sure “ain’t what they used to be” from a news standpoint. I am hard put to find many good news publications in general so the lack of good outlet for truly hard hitting, informative editorial cartoons is hardly surprising.

While Ted is to be applauded for trying to make a point (whether you agree with his tactics or not) a whole lot of nothing is going to change unless the news powers that be change their editorial goals.

Well, that’s the irony here. Controversy is what built the newspaper industry in the first place! They thrived on competition, where most cities had several newspapers. They did a marvelous job over the past 30 years of cutting their own throats by eliminating the competition, where we now have nothing but one newspaper towns and editors are petrified of anything that might “offend” a reader. Truly pathetic.

Ann Coulter figured it out.

So did Matt Drudge, Christopher Hitchens, and Rush Limbaugh, among others. The Daily Show, Colbert, South Park, and SNL do okay at it.

Anybody who has worked as a staff cartoonist has had that same experience. You are dead right here, JP.

How often have we seen editors go through the pile of cartoons that have arrived from the various syndicates in the daily mail, and every so often go around in the office with a particularly good, hard hitting cartoon and say, “Look at this one! Isn’t it great?”. Then when asked if they’re going to run it, they shoot back, laughing, “Are you kidding? No way!”. Then they go and tack in on to the bulletin board while they run some lame gag cartoon. Editors live in deathly fear of the phone ringing and having to deal with readers, which always made me wonder why they sought the job on the editorial page. The whole point of the editorial page is to get reader reaction! If they don’t want to deal with readers, then they should sit their lazy ass on the wire copy desk.

In this case, they had a table where they dumped out all the syndicated cartoons when they arrived by mail (ah, yes, remember that?). Whichever editor was pulling material for the next day’s paper could pick what they wanted, and I often came in to read what everyone was submitting.

What stunned me is that, time after time, the editors would run only the gags, the weak, the safe — while the best, hardest-hitting cartoons usually ended up pinned to the walls of their cubicles. These guys weren’t stupid; they KNEW what made a great editorial cartoon. They just didn’t want to deal with angry readers and angry letters as they got older, and so didn’t run the good stuff.

Ignorance is much easier to fight than complacency.

The problem lies with the rest of the lazy media, who see this national forum of cartoons and project them as being the best the field has to offer. Through little fault of their own, Newsweek’s Perspective page as an undue influence on newspaper editors, which translates to the Pulitzer Board and others when it comes to the awards. When left to themselves, editors have absolutely no idea what a good editorial cartoon is. A few years ago, Professor Lucy Caswell (head of the Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State) sat on the board judging editorial cartoons and helped educate editors with her on what to look for. Those years had outstanding winners (like Clay Bennett, one of the best in the business who got passed over many times before his selection). Since her departure, we’ve seen a return their old ways, of selecting the guys who appeared in Newsweek the most often.

What I think Ted is asking for is nothing more than for editors to do what they’re SUPPOSED to do. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

Taking myself as an example, I’ve never been in USA Today. Not once. I’ve been in Newsweek once. (It was, naturally, a cartoon featuring a guy watching TV in his living room. It was awful.)

Now, I may not be the best cartoonist around. But I’ve been syndicated since 1991. Done more than 4000 cartoons since then. Won prizes, yada yada yada. Not one of my cartoons was single panel enough, funny enough, etc. to be in USA Today? Really?

Which got me to thinking about other cartoonists whose work NEVER appears in these venues: alties like Tom Tomorrow and Ruben Bolling. Neo-alties like Matt Bors. Old hands, with Pulitzer Prizes to their names, like Tom Toles and Signe Wilkinson and Ben Sargeant, rarely if ever see their work in those pages.

Of course, this cuts the other way, too. During the 1990s, I was one of the most frequently reprinted cartoonists in the NYT Week In Review. And I have to be fair–many of the times my work appeared there, it took the place of far better stuff that didn’t.

You could say that it all evens out, but that’s not the point. Round-ups that purport to present “The Best” in the profession ought to make more of an effort to be inclusive and representative and thoughtful.

It was obviouse the two editors picking the toons liked a certain type of cartoon. So I never mailed them others that didn’t fit the mold.
I’m in the camp, that says we should be thanking these Mags for running cartoons, period.

Well it took 64 postings, but at last we arrive at the heart of the matter. Well done, Mr. Miller.