AAEC News

A letter from the president, Sept. 09

by Ted Rall

Thank you for making me president during the worst year for American editorial cartooning in history. That was awesome. You’re the best. I love you.

You all owe me drinks.

Seriously, I hope that we’ll look back at 2008-2009 as the year when our profession hit rock bottom and then began to recover. At least 27 of our friends and colleagues lost their jobs during that time; by most counts, that brings the number of full-time staff cartoonist positions below 40.

But August also brought about several developments, all positive, that were even more earth-shattering: The Chicago Tribune hired Scott Stantis away from The Birmingham News. The Tribune, which began the most recent wave of cartoonist layoffs by failing to replace Jeff MacNelly after he died in 2000, seems poised to lead the way back by promoting the importance of a high-profile editorial cartoonist position as part of its strategy to showcase a crusading opinion section. We’re told that Scott’s work may even appear on the front page of the print edition from time to time. Be still, my beating heart!

Maybe even better, The Birmingham News immediately announced its intention to hire a cartoonist to replace Scott. Even in tough times, the News understands that editorial cartooning is an important draw for readers.

The same holds true for Gannett and The Journal News in New York, which reversed its decision to layoff Pulitzer Prize-winner Matt Davies at the end of August.

Both the Tribune and Gannett’s decisions are sure to reverberate throughout the world of journalism. Here are papers that, despite their parent company’s dismal financial condition, see hard-hitting graphic commentary as part of the way to create a brighter future for itself. That is great news for us.

The closing of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer could easily have led to the cancellation of the Seattle convention. Instead, the AAEC seized the opportunity created by this crisis to build the basis for entirely new methods of putting on its conventions. The kind intercession of the Herblock Foundation not only allowed the 2009 convention to occur—the absence of which might have led to the beginning of the collapse of the association—but demonstrated that it is possible to put on a successful convention without a host newspaper. More than 115 people attended the convention, up significantly from the year before—this in the middle of the worst financial downturn since the founding of the AAEC.

We had fun in Seattle, but we also settled some long overdue business. For the first time ever, we are likely to end up with an Ethical Guidelines standard (on plagiarism, but other matters can be added in the future if need be). (Voting had not been tabulated at press time.) Old membership rolls, which included people who hadn’t paid their dues in many years (!), were ordered purged. Complaints about the quality of the work appearing on the association website, editorialcartoonists.com, were addressed in a meaningful way with a vote to have the Board of Directors review the work appearing on the site for quality control purposes and to continue a rigorous assessment of applying members’ work. There was also a general consensus that the AAEC should continue the policy I began of accentuating positive news about our profession while publicly downplaying negative news, such as layoffs.

Although we will still continue to look to newspapers for sponsorships in the years ahead, we finally recognized the need to explore alternative venues that will allow us to hold conventions when we can’t obtain one. Next year’s convention in Portland, Oregon, for example, may be held at Portland State University, which has extremely affordable on-campus hotel facilities. Another option being looked at for 2011 is the Poynter Institute in Florida.

As I turn things over to incoming president Rex Babin, who has lots of exciting ideas for next year’s convention, I want to thank you for your support and help throughout a challenging year that ended with an exciting sense of possibility.

—Ted

P.S. I meant that part about owing me drinks.

A letter from the prez

Working as an editorial cartoonist this year—working, that is, if anyone is interested in employing you—is like living inside Casey Kasem's brain: The hits keep on coming. Whether it's Robert Ariail or Jim Borgman or John Branch or Gary Brookins or Stuart Carlson or Richard Crowson or Bill Day or Eric Devericks or Brian Duffy or Peter Dunlap-Shohl or Bill Garner or Steve Greenberg or Lee Judge or Jim Lange or Drew Litton or Patrick O'Connor or Dwane Powell or Ed Stein, watching one of these great cartoonists, artists who developed close ties to their readers and communities, get laid off—and their positions eliminated—would have been terrible. We've lost 21 full-time staffers (including Chip Bok, Ben Sargent and Tom Meyer, who took buyouts) since I took the reins in September. Twenty-one! As you know, we didn't have many staff jobs to begin with.

The damage to our profession and newspaper readers is incalculable. Staff jobs are the primary source of income for editorial cartooning, not least because they provide a base for the local cartoons that inspire the greatest reader loyalty. Syndication doesn't provide health or retirement benefits. And no one has figured out how to eke a living from the Internet.

At times like this it's tempting to echo the oft-heard cry that we are, in the words of Ed Stein, the finest whalebone corset makers in America—quaint and doomed. But there's more to the state of editorial cartooning in 2009 than newspapers going out of business and/or getting rid of the only graphic political satire on their pages (who needs readers under 60 anyway?).

As I like to tell reporters who call for a quote for the latest “death of political cartooning” story, there are more AAEC members now than there were last year. And there were more last year than the year before. That's right—there are more professional editorial cartoonists. Some are alties. Others are web-only. Freelancers abound. Meanwhile, laid-off staffers are staying the course, whether in syndication or online. The future may not look like the past. (Although I suspect that most of the staffers who have hung on this long will stick around for years to come—and that there will be actual staff cartoonist hires before you know it.) But there is a future, both for American editorial cartooning and the AAEC.

This year in Seattle we'll be discussing both futures. The emphasis will be what you as an individual cartoonist can and must do to navigate the recession-ravaged landscape of the American newspaper business in this year and years ahead. Dave Horsey and I have developed an agenda that we hope you'll find both useful and entertaining. We'll also be talking about the future of the AAEC—and not just the usual BSing that gets forgotten as soon as we return to our hometowns and the hangovers clear.

On Saturday, July 4, in the morning just before the usual Business Meeting, we will hold a working forum to discuss whether the AAEC should change the way it does business in some important ways. The main topics will be questions that have been floating around our organization for years, rendered more urgent by the deteriorating financial situation of our membership and the obvious difficulties in securing a major newspaper to sponsor conventions:

Should we transform the AAEC into a guild like the Writers Union? Personally, I wonder if the time for this proposal hasn't long passed. Ultimately, a guild is ineffective unless it can deny essential services to employers in a strike or other action. It's a buyers' market for cartoons. On the other hand, a guild would be able to take collective action. It could, for example, organize syndicated cartoonists to deny their work to papers that have laid off a staffer. It could make sure that every member posts his or her cartoons to the AAEC website. In any event, it's time to hash this out.

Should we merge with NCS? Proponents say we could take advantage of NCS' ability to negotiate discounted rates at convention hotels, not to mention save on the doubling of membership dues for editorial cartoonists who belong to both organizations. Others, like me, worry that AAEC and NCS have different goals and cultures and would therefore make an uneasy fit. Either way, we have to consider it.

In order to reduce expenses, should we hold a joint convention with NCEW or another journalists' group to cut costs? This seems like a relatively low-impact proposal with relatively low negative repercussions. We would, for example, continue to hold our own panel discussions. Still, they're there. NCEW, for example, holds their conventions in September, after the beginning of school—reducing the ability of many AAEC members to attend along with their families. It also remains to be seen to what extent NCEW's membership would raise our clout in dealing with convention costs.

Should we give up newspaper sponsorships altogether? I vote an emphatic “no.” There are still lots of newspapers around, many with budgets that can easily absorb $20,000 or more to sponsor an AAEC convention. Because we're familiar with this model and because we don't want to establish a precedent that discourages papers from supporting cartooning if and when the economy improves, our first choice should always be to get a newspaper sponsorship. But it may be that future presidents will find it impossible—as I nearly did after our would-be sponsor, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, folded—to find a sponsor. In that case, we should strongly consider the NCS model, which holds conventions at vacation resorts in order to encourage higher attendance both by artists and their families. High attendance equals lower room rates. We might also have to copy NCS by raising the registration fee so that we become self-funding. One hundred attendees paying an additional $100 each yields $10,000.

After “The Future of the AAEC” workshop on Saturday morning from 9 to 10:30, we will hold our Business Meeting from 10:30 to 12 noon. Any serious consensus that results from the workshop that requires a vote of the membership may be discussed and formally initiated at that time.

Whew. So much serious stuff.

Which is making me thirsty. I can't wait for the bar to open on July 1st at the Washington Athletic Club—and to hang out with you there!