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Editorial cartooning

Duffy to do cartoons for Register competitor

Published: December 17, 2008 1 minute 8 comments

Brian Duffy, who was unceremoniously shown the door after 25 years as the editorial cartoonist for the Des Moines Register two weeks ago, will be doing a weekly cartoon for a competing newspaper. The alternative newsweekly, Cityview, gave Brian a full page last week to say good bye to readers, but the publisher decided to make the gig a regular feature.

The publisher was quoted by the Iowa Independent as stating,

We offered space to former Des Moines Register cartoonist Brian Duffy in last weekâ??s issue to publish his farewell cartoon, as the daily did not provide him with that opportunity. The page has now turned, and I am pleased to let you know that you will find Duffyâ??s cartoons each week in this paper.

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Comments 8

  1. “Since the announcement of Duffyâ??s dismissal the paper has had 700 cancelled subscriptions.”

    ‘Nuff said.

    Too many bean counters armed with axes.

  2. If a subscription is $100 per year, that would mean they just lost $70,000. Is that right?

  3. I hope Randy and Steve’s calculations are correct, because that means they probably lost Duffy’s salary for no gain, and much ill will and lost readers.

    And I’m so glad to see him getting that forum in the competing publication. Sweet.

  4. The Register is $208 per year, and the number of cancellations is probably over 700 by now. They have lost $150K/year in revenue and lost yet another distinguishing feature of a once-great paper. I hope Duffy is looking for a syndicator.

  5. By my count, my old newspaper in Dur’m, NC, has lightened its circulation list by about 21,000 readers (roughly a 45 percent drop) in the nearly four years since the new owners treated me to a Duffy-style perp walk.

    I won’t be so bold as to claim responsibility for all of that decline, however.

  6. Wow, John, that’s quite a drop. I can only surmise that the quality of content has changed, and not the reader. When are newspapers going to get this figured out? I feel more of a bond with the two newspapers I subscribe to, as it is a bit of an antidote being on the computer all day. As naive as it sounds, I think this is a period of opportunity for newspapers to reestablish themselves as vital and worth reading.

  8. The letter from the publisher — Al Manzi — was the publisher of the Daily Herald in Provo, Utah when I was there as the staff cartoonist. He was quite supportive of my work as an editorial cartoonist (something that was not easy at a 35,000 circ. paper) and expressed to me how much it benefited the paper.

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