The Last (Advance) Editoonist
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The Cleveland Plain Dealer has announced that they will not replace staff editorial cartoonist Jeff Darcy.
From Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn:
Our longtime political cartoonist Jeff Darcy retired Sunday after a decades-long career in which he produced thousands of biting and funny cartoons, and I tell you that no one on this staff was more of a lightning rod for reader comments.
Alas, Jeff’s retirement is the end of an era. We will no longer have a political cartoonist in the newsroom. I’m converting his position to something I’m not yet ready to discuss but which is more focused on our evolving needs.
With all we are doing and hope to do – to remain a thriving and successful newsroom — we constantly re-assess our priorities. A political cartoonist in a newsroom the size of ours no longer makes the priority list, as much as that distresses some readers – and cartoonists. I know from previous cartoon decisions that cartoonists are a vocal lot, so I expect this column will bring heavy criticism from them on social media.
We will continue to carry political cartoons from our wire service subscriptions, which covers national issues. What we lose is cartoons about local issues, which gave our platforms a dimension that is increasingly rare in U.S. regional news outlets.
Quinn closes with:
Ultimately, we must stay focused on our mission: producing high-quality, sustainable journalism.
From the gist of the editorial it will be ai-generated/-prompted journalism.
As Advance Publications joins Gannett, McClatchy, Alden, etc. this leaves Lee Enterprises as the last major media group employing staff editorial cartoonists (Adam Zyglis and Phil Hands). There are still a few independent newspapers that have editoonists on staff.
feature image by Jeff Darcy of The Cleveland Plain Dealer
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