By Randy Barrett, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Monday, July 2, 2007

Political cartoonists are beginning to wonder if the last joke might be on them.

The seismic changes and downsizing in the print news business are driving deep soul-searching among practitioners of the venerable art form, which now supports only 80 full-time positions at leading metro dailies -- down from about 200 two decades ago.

	Facing the same pressures as newspapers and reporters, editorial cartoonists, usually ink-and-paper traditionalists, are dipping their brushes into the world of animated online punditry.

As newspapers push toward the Web as the final media frontier, cartoonists -- genetically programmed to spot trends, tripe, and trouble -- are keenly aware that they must change along with the industry or risk being left in the inkwell.

"We're not in the business of whining about jobs being reduced," said Rob Rogers, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and the staff cartoonist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "We want to be about getting better and adapting to a changing economy."

The AAEC will celebrate 50 years of existence at its annual meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington from July 4 to 7. Amid the shifting landscape, some leading cartoonists lament the graying of their ranks. Fewer young cartoonists show up at the convention now, said Newsday's Walt Handelsman, who 20 years ago encouraged promising newcomers to redouble their efforts and aim for staff cartoonist positions on newspapers. "Now when I talk to kids, I'm much more negative," Handelsman said. "I would highly recommend [they] try to do something on the Web."

The Internet supplies a wide-open canvas, but it offers little in the way of remuneration for most independent sketchers. Veteran print cartoonists cling to their staff jobs for good reason. Most earn a reasonable middle-class living on salaries ranging from $50,000 to $75,000 per year. Many have syndication deals that may generate an additional $20,000 a year, but that money is famously unpredictable. "I try not to think of it as real income since tomorrow it could be gone," said Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles.

Or his job could be. Dirt-cheap syndication of editorial cartoons is one of the primary reasons that hundreds of newspapers have dropped in-house cartoonists. Images can be purchased for as little as $300 per month through deals with Universal Press Syndicate, Copley News Service, and others.

Toons on the Move
A few top print cartoonists -- including Handelsman and Ann Telnaes, who is a freelancer for Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate/New York Times Syndicate -- have begun working in the new medium of animated Web cartoons. Handelsman won a Pulitzer Prize this year, in part, for several short animations skewering President Bush, the National Security Agency, and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The flashy animations are fun but enormously time-consuming, Handelsman said. It usually takes him one to three hours to finish a print cartoon once he has the concept. A Web animation can gobble up 40 to 70 hours and requires scads of drawings and original voices. Handelsman is a natural mimic and does all of his own voice characterizations.

He originally agreed to produce an animated cartoon for Newsday every two weeks, but the workload nearly broke him because he was still responsible for daily print drawings: "Pulitzer shmulitzer. I couldn't keep up that pace as long as I was a full-time editorial cartoonist." He has since cut back to one animation per month.

The undisputed guru of animated editorial cartoons is Mark Fiore, 37, an independent artist who spent only a few months as a print cartoonist for the San Jose Mercury News before jumping to the Web in 2001. Fiore is one of the few to support himself as a freelance Web cartoonist, and his work appears regularly on the websites of CBS News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Village Voice. His creations can be viewed at MarkFiore.com.

Early on, Fiore added rudimentary animations, such as eyeblinks, to otherwise static cartoons. Editors loved it, but the public soon demanded increasing sophistication. Now his work includes sound effects, a wider range of motion, and music. Fiore does many of the voices himself; his girlfriend supplies female characterizations.

It's a huge time sink. Fiore usually spends two to three 17-hour days on an online cartoon, and he must hit a Wednesday deadline every week. Creating a Web cartoon also requires different pacing than single-panel drawings -- and usually calls for multiple gags. "You don't want to put all the buildup into one joke at the end," Fiore said. "People are expecting more now."

With all the up-front work that an animated cartoon requires, the news cycle can easily undermine a concept. Handelsman tries to focus his toons on broader ideas that have a longer shelf life. "I've tried to stay so general in my topics so that if medium-sized news happens, it won't screw up my animations," he said.

Fiore helped Handelsman get into animations, and he regularly receives calls from other political cartoon veterans interested in the new technology. He's generous with his time and advice. "I encourage those guys to switch over. In an ideal world, we'd be able to do both," Fiore said. "The way the traditional print business is going, it's getting scary to have that ... staff job. Even if you've won a Pulitzer, that's no guarantee of job security."

Pat Oliphant, the eminence grise and demigod of editorial cartoonists, isn't crazy about the newest generation of moving cartoons. "They're not full animations and don't really do it for me," he told National Journal. In the 1970s, Oliphant and several other cartoonists tried to create full animations using "computers as big as refrigerators." The experience left him convinced that the best way to create animations is under a camera. "I'm an old fart that way. I'm traditional, and I work with brush and ink on paper." Oliphant is a freelancer with Universal Press Syndicate.

A battle is currently raging in the field about whether an animation should be considered a true editorial cartoon. Several sketchers think that the Pulitzer committee should ultimately create separate prize categories for print and moving toons to settle the argument.

Animations intrigue Toles, and he doesn't regard them as second-class efforts. "It's technically different but fundamentally the same thing. You're communicating an idea in a largely visual medium. I wouldn't say that I think it's intrinsically superior, or in any way a lesser form of the art." He's considering the new medium for his own work but is also mindful of its complexity and time requirements.

Web cartoons, whether animated or static, generate huge responses from readers. The instant feedback can be refreshing but also troubling -- Fiore has received death threats. "It's always a compliment no matter what they say," he said.

Liberal White Male Club
For better or worse, America's political cartoonists remain a tight-knit cadre of older white males. About 85 percent of the AAEC's 392 members fit this demographic. The majority of cartoonists -- some members estimate as many as 90 percent -- lean to the left. Most are unapologetic about their political persuasion, but they bristle at the notion that they represent only one point of view.

"My sympathies are more with the types of things that Democrats say they want to do, but that's not the same as saying I'm a partisan Democrat," Toles said. "I don't take the same relish in targeting Democrats, but when [one] deserves it, I'm happy to dish it out."

Ben Sargent, cartoonist for The Austin American-Statesman, agrees: "We're not carrying the water. We're editorialists. We have to cherish and protect our independence."

Like reporters, editorial cartoonists guard their autonomy fiercely. Toles won the right to lampoon anybody and everything during his early years at the now-defunct Buffalo Courier-Express, and he insisted on full creative control when he joined The Washington Post in 2002. "Once you have [editorial freedom], it's so important and intrinsic it's inconceivable to work without it."

But having independence doesn't mean that cartoons always get published. Every leading editorial cartoonist has a few examples of work that editors deemed too offensive to run. Jeff Danziger's favorite depicted President Bush and Vice President Cheney paddling an American GI's corpse downstream. AAEC President Rogers put Osama bin Laden inside a Catholic church during the child-molestation scandal involving priests, and a Telnaes lampoon of the media during early Iraq war coverage was spiked by numerous papers because of a sexual allusion in it.

Scott Stantis of The Birmingham News is one of the few conservative cartoonists in the business. "You have to be true to yourself," he said. He considers himself an "oddity" but says that his minority status among toon drawers has helped his work stand out. Stantis's favorite cartoon, depicting the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in heaven facing a horde of aborted fetuses, caused his wife (a Democrat) to stop speaking to him for three days.

Surprisingly, many leading cartoonists -- including Oliphant, Sargent, and Toles -- received no formal artistic training. Danziger's mother was a portrait artist, and he began drawing on his own initiative at an early age but never attended art school. "There was always art material around the house," said Danziger, who draws for Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate. One common thread among top sketchers in the field is a voracious appetite for news, both print and online. They also find it difficult to explain precisely how they conceptualize their cartoons.

"I still don't fully understand how the idea process works," Sargent said. "If you look too closely, I'm afraid it will disappear. It's an insane leap of faith to come in every day and assume it will bear fruit."

Toles listens to his gut: "Things that piss me off always make the list." He sketches out four complete cartoons each day on different subjects and sends them around the Post editorial department for feedback. "It's sort of like a non-drug-induced LSD experience," Toles said. "You just try to get as much stuff going on as possible and try out of the chaos to select things that fit."

Oliphant also waits to be piqued. "I work myself up to some state of indignation every day and then decide which is the best way to do it," he said. Oliphant cites Paul Conrad, the veteran Los Angeles Times cartoonist who now freelances for Tribune Media, and the late Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist famous for his drawings of World War II grunts on the front lines, as his personal favorites in the field. "They were real nut-cutters, as a cartoonist should be. The name of the game is to kick ass and take names."

Not Irrelevant
Everyone in the industry worries what the future holds for editorial cartooning, but few predict that the discipline will disappear. "I think we're always going to be around," Stantis said. "I'm curious about what form it will take."

Wearing his hat as leader of the cartoonists association, Rogers hopes to relay a clear message next week in Washington: "We are relevant. We are not an extravagance for newspapers." Ironically, the AAEC was created in 1957 to address similar predictions of gloom and doom for American cartoonists.

Rogers welcomes the trend toward online outlets and thinks it will bring new youth and talent into the field. Oliphant agrees: "Newspapers -- that's buggy-whip stuff. Things are going online. Those that get in first will be remembered."