Bill Day on the Dying Art of Editooning
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“Political cartoons are dying a slow death. The cartoonists who remain are doing what they can to keep them alive. Others have had to make what was once their job, a hobby.”
Bill Day has been an editorial cartoonist for more than 40 years as a staff cartoonist for the Detroit Free Press (1985-1998) and the Memphis Commercial Appeal (1983-85 and 1998-2009). After that he went freelance syndication with Cagle Cartoons and with Smart City Memphis (2011-present).
It is at that last site where Joe Krattley has published his story titled “The Death of Political Cartoons,” a discussion with Bill Day about the art and the state of editorial cartooning and the newspaper industry.
Editor’s Note: Because the decline of newspaper cartoonists is a sad chapter in American journalism, I am publishing this story by Joe Krattley. It features former Commercial Appeal cartoonist Bill Day, who allows his work to be featured on this blog where he reminds us regularly that a picture – in his case, a cartoon – is worth a thousand words. His award-winning work is featured on the Smart City Memphis home page in the top right column.
Even as more and more of his co-workers were laid off after the Great Recession of 2007, Day remained hopeful. After almost a century of having a cartoonist, he thought, surely they would keep him around. Yet on a March morning in 2009, 15 minutes into working on his sketches, Day got a call from his editor to meet at human resources. He knew what was coming.
Day and 24 of his co-workers were laid off.
This is a story of Bill Day surviving as a cartoonist in a declining newspaper market where his profession is dying.
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