October 12, 2012 – DarylCagle.com

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Farewell to NBCNews.com/msnbc.com

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date October 12, 2012

For the past six years we’ve enjoyed a partnership with msnbc.com (which recently changed its name to NBCNews.com) and for six years before that, with Slate.com when it was part of the Microsoft Network – all in all, twelve years with Microsoft and MSN.com. I regret to write that our partnership has come to an end.

I was the official “editorial cartoonist” for Slate.com, msnbc.com and NBCNews.com. Of-course, all of the cartoonists that work with us through our Cagle Cartoons syndicate and Politicalcartoons.com were featured on the MSN.com sites, including slide shows on news topics of the day on msnbc.com, the Today Show site and NBC Sports; we did a cartoon week in review and maintained a “CartoonBlog.”

Recently, msnbc.com changed ownership to be run by NBC, and NBC itself recently changed ownership. It isn’t usual these days for cartoons to be cut to save costs, but we were cut for editorial reasons. The reason I was given for our departure was “the new management wants nothing to do with cartoons.” Msnbc.com/NBCNews.com has never had an opinion section, or other opinion content, so it is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

Readers of our Cagle.com site will see very few changes – the NBCNews.com logo is gone from our header and will be gone from my attribution in my future cartoons. Our site will look the same as always; we’ll continue our syndication business as always at CagleCartoons.com and Politicalcartoons.com.

Our editors at MSN/Slate/msnbc/NBCNews were wonderful to work with all these years; I’ve appreciated their support for our cartoonists and our art form. They loved what we did, let us do what we wanted and were happy with what we wanted to do – the perfect editors! They were great. I miss them already.

Tags cagle.com, caglecartoons.com, cartoonist, Daryl Cagle, editorial cartoons, msn.com, msnbc.com, NBCNews.com, news media, political cartoons, politicalcartoons.com

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De Rosier’s Final Cartoon For The Albany Times Union

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date October 12, 2012

Today on his blog, Albany Times-Union cartoonist John de Rosier filed his final cartoon for the paper. de Rosier was notified earlier this week that he was being laid off due to budget cuts, along with full-time photographer Phil Kamrass. At least the paper let him go out in style, unlike Clay Jones, whose final cartoon was killed by his editor at the Free Lance Star.

Tim O’Brien, the president of the Albany Newspaper Guild, has a nice blog post up about the lost of de Rosier’s cartooning job at the Times-Union, and its larger implications to a newspaper that just earned a Newspaper of Distinction Award from the Associated Press:

A distinctive art form is being steadily destroyed by people who look purely at revenue. It’s hard to say that an editorial cartoonist generates a certain amount of income for the newspaper, just as it is hard to say how much any single reporter or photographer does. But eliminating the cartoonist sends a message to readers: We are taking away something you value, something that makes your newspaper distinctive, something you cannot get anywhere else. We value your newspaper less, and you should too.

It’s a terrible message, and it comes at a price that may not be immediately apparent but will cost newspapers dearly in the long run.

“We know staff cuts can hurt our product,” wrote Times Union editor Rex Smith in an email to employees, “but we also know that we’re working smarter and more efficiently than we ever have before, and we recognize the promise of journalism in the digital age.

It’s a shame Smith doesn’t recognize the importance and promise political cartoons can offer to newspapers online in the digital age.

Tags Albany Times Union, cartoonist, John de Rosier

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European Cartoonists React to Unexpected Nobel Win

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date October 12, 2012

In a surprise move, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the European Union for their role in promoting peace and democracy over the last sixty years. But given the current state of Europe’s economy, many across the continent think the timing of this award couldn’t be worse.

We have lots of European cartoonists that contribute to our site, so I thought I’d turn it over to them to get their thoughts about the EU winning the award…