Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Supplemental posting: A link in the chain is lost

Skip to comments

Mike Peterson Published: September 7, 2011 1 minute 0 comments

 
I don't often cover cartooning news here, but this is a case in which several lines cross. Word from Michigan is that Felix Grabowski has died. This nice write-up on Patch.com talks about his contributions to the early work of putting newspapers on-line, but also mentions his work with Newspapers-in-Education.

Felix and his wife, Jan, created a company to promote educational programs through the newspaper, which was also what I did for a little over a dozen years. Anong other things, during my time at the Post-Star in Glens Falls, NY, I produced a weekly feature, "Drawing Conclusions," that featured two editorial cartoons and discussed them in terms that would help kids understand both the news they were discussing and the medium itself.

During that same period, Felix's company was producing a weekly feature with the cooperation of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists that did much the same thing I was, but was licensed beyond one newspaper, a feat I was never able to accomplish, in part because of the licensing issues his AAEC tie-in negated, and in part because he was already there and, if not an 800-pound gorilla, certainly somebody doing the job in a way that didn't leave a gap to be filled.

We met at the Newspapers-in-Education national convention in Chicago seven or eight years ago, but he was doing his "how to set up a good NIE web site" breakout session in one room while I was doing my "how to teach kids about editorial cartoons" session in another, so we didn't get to sample each other's wears.

I can say, however, from our conversation in the hall between our rooms, that he had a genuine passion for the art form and for trying to preserve it through bringing it into the classroom and inviting kids to think about how metaphor and imagery can advance a debate.

The once-vibrant field of Newspapers in Education is in dire straits as it is, with newspapers no longer willing to invest in the sort of community relations and long-range planning that it combined, and the same short-sighted lack of vision has put editorial cartoonists on the Endangered Species list.

We can't afford to lose good, energetic people like Felix, who care about this stuff and whose efforts are not to be limited and repurposed by beancounters and consultants.