Editooning – By Necessity A New System Emerges
Skip to comments
A years-long, physically-enforced sabbatical ended for Steve Sack last year when he returned to cartooning. Rob Tornoe at Editor & Publisher tells of Steve Sack’s Comeback.
Journalists are used to overcoming adversity, but what if you’re a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and you suddenly can no longer hold a pencil?
That’s the situation Steve Sack faced in 2022.
But in 2025, on something of a lark, he decided to sign up for life-drawing classes and began doing simple gesture drawings with his left hand. They weren’t great at first, but he kept going, kept practicing and began to gain more coordination and control.
But Sack’s former employer for over 40 years didn’t rehire him because the new newspaper business is abandoning editorial cartoonists overall and staff cartoonists in particular. Says Tornoe:
I count fewer than 20 full-time editorial cartoonists on staff for news organizations in the U.S.
That number keeps getting lower as the years pass. Going from 50 to a couple dozen, now to a score.
No one seems to list those current staff editorial cartoonists. My current list numbers 17:
John Darkow (Columbia Missourian), Clay Bennett (Chattanooga Times Free Press), Phil Hands (Wisconsin State Journal), Bill Bramhall (New York Daily News), Adam Zyglis (Buffalo News), Pat Bagley (Salt Lake Tribune), Mike Luckovich (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), J.D. Crowe (Alabama Media Group), Matt Davies (Newsday), RJ Matson (Roll Call), Michael Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal), Mike Smith (Las Vegas Sun), Matt Wuerker (Politico), Drew Sheneman (Newark Star Ledger), Jeff Danziger (Rutland Herald), Alexander Hunter (Washington Times), and Rick McKee (Augusta Chronicle) (see comment).
Addition: John Deering, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
*Corrections, additions or removals, would be appreciated*
So with newspapers no longer a valuable income stream cartoonists have turned to a modern alternative. Back to Rob Tornoe:
But, I’m also noticing a trend.
Sack’s devoted readers have followed him to Substack. So have fans of Ann Telnaes, the former Washington Post cartoonist who left the paper after they tried to kill a cartoon critical of the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos. The same goes for Kevin Kallagher, the former Baltimore Sun cartoonist and Pulitzer Prize finalist who still draws cartoons for The Economist. Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Anderson’s Substack has collected over 12,000 subscribers, while his paid Counterpoint newsletter has over 70,000. [links added]
Your favorite cartoonist may have a Substack or Patreon account.
feature image by Dave Whamond
Comments 11