CSotD: Extra effort in the post-samizdat era
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In recapping D-Day coverage last week, I mentioned that, while afternoon papers had same-day coverage of the invasion, the morning papers, too late to cover the event on their regular schedules, published "Extras" on June 6.
I've found over the years that, while everyone is familiar with the image of the newsboy shouting "Extra! Extra!" few of them realize that the word doesn't mean that the news is "extra interesting" or "extra important" but that the paper has, in fact, printed a second edition that day in order to cover a major event.
That was, of course, back when newspapers were part of a community and publishers could make decisions based on what they felt would best serve that community rather than on what the suits back at corporate would approve.
It's not just newspapers that have lost their civic connection: It's nearly every business, and I've been flogging this topic now for 20 years.
But, as I write this, it's been nearly 30 hours since the Orlando murders and I've seen very little from American cartoonists on the topic.
Clay Jones, who is a one-man show and also never appears to sleep, has a cartoon posted on his own site and I've seen one or two others on Facebook, but nothing either on the syndicate sites or on individual newspaper sites.
And, as seen above, Jonathan Rosenberg responded to the news by doing what a cartoonist does: Creating a cartoon. Yes, a cartoon with specifics you could argue about.
But it's harder to argue with silence. Harder still to agree with it.
Before you tell me that this only works for people like Jones and Rosenberg because they have their own on-line access, let me remind you that, way back in the days of print-only, Bill Mauldin created his iconic Lincoln mourning JFK cartoon after hearing the news at a luncheon and racing back to the office in time to make the Extra edition of the morning paper he worked for.
Today, of course, we don't have deadlines, and papers rush the news to their on-line sites before they can even verify its accuracy. But cartoonists lag behind.
Though, as we hipster online types would say, #Notallcartoonists.
Just, I guess, all cartoonists who work through the system, as it exists here.
It's not a conspiracy. It's just a system. And it's not the only system. But it seems to be our system.
Or maybe it's the time difference, but somehow Africartoons managed to pick up this challenging commentary from Khalid Albaih, a Romanian-born Sudanese cartoonist based in Qatar, whose convoluted background likely makes him one of many Muslims around the world who watched the coverage praying the shooter would not be "one of us."
I would note, too, his caution: He is not acknowledging that this is an act of political terrorism, simply that it fits into the pre-existing argument that assumes "Muslim" and "terrorist" are synonymous to those who gain political power from the concept, whichever side they claim.
And, while I didn't see his cartoon at Cartoon Movement as of 6 a.m., there were plenty of other international cartoonists who had submitted their own reactions there.
Here is a sample of what was posted by then:
(pedripol – Spain)
(Giuseppe La Micela – Italy)
(Vladimir Khakhanov – Russia)
(Emanuele Del Rosso – Italy)
(Spiros Derveniotis – Greece)
(Paolo Lombardi — Italy)
(Pete Kreiner — Australia)
Not only are those just a sampling of what was posted by 6 a.m. EST, but more continue to come in, because Cartoon Movement has a page where its member cartoonists can post their own work at their own pace, so you can go have a look whenever you'd like.
A couple of thoughts:
First of all, looking over those cartoons, it doesn't take a lot of experience to sort out the ones that American papers would publish and which ones would get spiked. However, I don't know that they'd all be published in die Welt, le Figaro or Corriere della Sera, either, and, when I say I don't know, I mean just that.
But they might well find a place somewhere. While nasty, edgy little Charlie Hebdo doesn't sell that many copies in France compared with the nation's mainstream press, it is but one of a lot of odd little niche papers throughout the world, while America's alternative press has, over the last few decades, largely been bought out by corporate chains and then either gelded or shut down completely.
Freedom of the press has always been the purview of people who own presses, but, in this age, it shouldn't take much to work your way around that limitation.
It starts with having a willingness to connect the seat of the pants with the seat of the chair.
And, from there, an unwillingness to be stifled by deadlines and schedules and systems.
Or, for God's sake, by your own lack of passion.
Maybe we need less freedom, not more. Maybe we need restrictive censorship to rekindle that fire.
After all, before perestroika, before glasnost, there was samizdat, in which courageous, passionate dissidents used photocopiers and fax machines to circulate their opinions under the noses of their Soviet masters.
Samizdat is a Russian portmanteau meaning "self-published" and was defined by dissident Vladimir Bukovsky thus: "I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."
Or maybe we're just looking in the wrong corners: Maybe our dissidents, our passionate boat-rockers, are not editorial cartoonists anymore.
There were plenty of memes on the topic sprouting up all over social media yesterday. Some were clever, some were not. Some drew on accurate information, some did not. Some were offensive, some were not.
But none of them were written on schedule, and none of them were submitted for approval, and none of them were held until the people who post such things had gotten back in the office following the weekend.
None of them are really "editorial cartoons," either, of course.
They're just something extra.
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