Robert is an editorial cartoonist and a longtime contributor to our Cagle.com site and our syndication package; he’s the beloved “dean” of the French political cartoonists. (Although some may call him the “titan,” I prefer the “dean.”
Every cartoon fan should make a contribution to get Robert’s book, and to make sure the book is published! At this time, Robert has reached half of his modest fundraising goal.
Robert has a unique quirk where he draws with little curly-cues depicting details that typical cartoonists would not see as curly-cues, like ears and nostrils. Sometimes I think that Robert doesn’t like for his pen to leave the paper. I’ve studied some of Robert’s drawings where I think he actually never lifted his pen. Here’s is Robert’s archive on Cagle.com.
Robert is 82 years old and although he’s been drawing editorial cartoons for many decades, this is his first book! The excellent, French satirical magazine “Zelium” is managing this campaign for Robert, who wrote this note:
It is no wonder that a 82 old timer like me has not yet released an album when we see the job that it represents!
Fortunately Cesare, of the excellent review Zélium, takes care of everything with efficiency and patience.
The most extraordinary thing is that Cesare manages to support me (whereas I do not know how to do it).But there is also something else, and I’ m not talking about the book, and that’ s the outpouring of sympathy and your encouragements, dear colleaguesand dear former strangers (as they are no longer)I want to tell you that only for that, it was worth it –even if it had to stop now. Although, if it continues I will not see any problem!
See you very soon, Robert Rousso
I started doing illustrations for The New York Times around 1963 and continued on until 2016. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, I had to quit my part time teaching at Parsons because the Times would go so far as to call me there and ask me to come by before going home. It got so crazy I had to just stay home and freelance instead of trying to teach at the same time.
Working for the Times was different than working for any of my other clients because at the Times there was a “bull pen” opposite the art directors’ offices where 4 or 5 free-lance illustrators sat and worked at drawing boards every day. There was Robert Zimmerman, Randy Jones, Tom Bloom, Robert Neubecker, David Suter and others who would come in and hang out and eat lunch in the Times’ cafeteria. They might be delivering a job and then just hang around and likely pick up another job while there because it was so convenient for the A.D.s to just walk across and get a quick spot drawing. I, myself, did not do any illustrations there (well, only once, I think) because I was working in my linocut style and it was inconvenient for me to do my work other than at home, but it was fun to talk shop with the boys (I don’t remember any women there except Tom Bloom’s pregnant wife) and we had good times all sitting together in the cafeteria.
I remember a few notable illustrations I did for The Gray Lady, the nickname of the Times, among the many hundreds I did in those days. One was a ¾ page illo for the front page of the Wednesday Living Section, which was a section I often worked for under art directors Jerelle Kraus and later Nancy Kent. The subject simply was chicken sandwiches. The author had gone around to various famous high-scale chefs and asked them how they would make the humble chicken sandwich. The article went on to talk about inexpensive chicken as a food in general. So, I decided to create (in the large space I was given), the grandest picture of a chicken that the world had ever seen. I had overnight to do it. I rushed home and started working. I worked all night long without any sleep lino-cutting an intricate, highly decorative, complex vision of a big eye-catching chicken saying, in a tiny word balloon, “cheap.” By morning I had printed it out but felt that I still had time on the train to embellish further with a rapidograph pen, which I did in the hour-long trip to Grand Central Station. Jerelle was very happy with it and wondered what I could possibly do if I actually had a lot of time to do an illustration like this so she decided to give me an advanced assignment to do a Halloween front page a year in advance. I worked on a large apple tree, Halloween revelers, cider, trick or treaters and the like, in as much detail as I could for the whole year amidst all my other jobs. I lovingly drew every detail of the bark and every twig and leaf on that tree and every li’l kid in costume until it filled almost the entire front page of The Living Section. To tell you the truth, though, the chicken was better.
A detail from Randy’s Halloween cover, that he worked on for a year.
Another time, I was on vacation in California and Jerelle thought it would be cute to give me an assignment while I was out there. Through some fantastic Sherlock Holmes sleuthing she acquired my mother-in-law’s phone number and tracked down my number out there and found me in Los Angeles. I thought it was such a funny, perverse feat of art directorship that I actually accepted the job and had to go out and buy some lino cutters, lino block and printing ink and roller to do it.
It was so much fun to work for Jerelle. She really fought for the illustrators, constantly doing battle with the wordsmiths in the struggle for space on the pages. Later, she was on the Op-Ed and would get people like Folon and Andy Warhol to do pictures for her. She spoke about 6 languages and she seemed to know everybody –even Richard Nixon.
Jerelle asked me once to do a Santa Claus. It had to be a Danish Santa Claus… AND… it was to be in a long vertical space. So, I drew a tall skinny European-style Santa whose outfit was replete with intricate detail featuring symbols of the Danish Christmas. At the last minute, before going to press, she lost that space in the paper and ended up with a smaller, more conventional almost squarish shape for the art. No time for me to re-do it. She skillfully cut the top part of my picture and joined it to the bottom part (eliminating the whole central area). Because she was an artist herself, she was able to make it work. I liked it better than what I had done.
I had worked with Nancy Kent at Connecticut Magazine and then she went to the Times and I worked with her for many years until she retired. She worked the Living Section for a long time and was then given the special magazines to do. Those were great because I sometimes got to do covers along with interesting inside stuff for subjects like Travel, Health, Christmas, etc..
I worked on the Book Review section with Steve Heller and got to do covers there too. When Steve came to the Times, he had come from Screw Magazine. At Screw, he had called me one day (I didn’t know him yet) and said, “Will you do a cover for me for $100?” Then he named the important artists like Ed Sorel who had done $100 covers for him so I said “Yes.” He loved my cover and asked for a second one. Then he went to the Times to the Op-Ed page. When I found him there, I said, “How do you like working for The New York Times?” To which he replied, “It’s just like working for Screw!”
Randy’s Al Hirshfeld parody for “Not the New York Times.”
In 1978, the Times workers went on strike. They were out for quite a while. No New York Times! Some guys from the Lampoon plus the author Jerzy Kosinski, Carl Bernstein and his wife, Nora Ephron and George Plimpton and other notables decided to try a parody of the Times and have it printed up to look exactly like the Times. They even got some of the actual pressmen from the Times to lay it out and compose it. The famous writers all wrote parts of it and a small number of artists like myself were asked to join the fun. Everybody thought we’d be sued so the contributors were allowed anonymity. I decided to take a chance and use my real name in doing a parody of a Hirschfeld cartoon and another parody of a typical “vague and incomprehensible” op-ed cartoon. In the Hirschfeld, I decided to draw “Nina” and hide the name “Hirschfeld” in the picture the way he used to hide his daughter’s name, Nina in his caricatures. I later found out that Hirschfeld saw my parody and said, “Very interesting”.
The parody of the Gray Lady was hilarious. There were takes on Bloomingdale ads, ridiculous TV listings, ads for movies, the “Living” section became the “Having” section and gave tips on furnishing your loft with old newsstands. The front page featured two main stories. The first was New York blaming overweight marathon runners for destroying and collapsing the Queensboro bridge complete with a photo of the bridge collapsing. The other major story was the death of the new Pope. At that time, we had a new Pope taking office after the incumbent Pope died and shortly thereafter the new Pope died, so, on the front page we had “ Pope Dies Yet Again” showing a THIRD Pope (a picture of Lampoon editor Tony Hendra) who had the shortest reign ever… 19 minutes.
We didn’t get sued and we had a big party for all contributors at George Plimpton’s townhouse on the upper east side.
As I sat reading my copy of Not The New York Times on the train out of Westport one day while the strike was still on, an excited commuter leaned over the back of my seat and started shouting, “The New York Times is back?” I said, “No, this is Not The New York Times”. He said, “But, that’s The New York Times!!” Finally, I carefully pointed to each word on the masthead, Not… The… New… York… Times”! He slunk back in his seat utterly confused and dejected.
As of late, the art in the Times (on Sundays especially), often consists of big, splashy nonsense. Even Ralph Nader wrote a letter to them condemning the waste of space on frivolous and meaningless art that cheats the reader of valuable news items that could occupy the wasted space.
And now, most recently we see that the Gray Lady has dispensed with all editorial cartoons in her foreign editions. The once glorious art-laden Lady is no more.
The Gray Lady has gotten a lot grayer now.
Randy’s cartoon lino-cut about The New York Times banning editorial cartoons.
The cartoon museum at St Just le Martel will be doing an exhibition of cartoons about The New York Times banning editorial cartoons. I wouldn’t be surprised if they also do a book. We’ve collected over 40 cartoons just from our CagleCartoons group to contribute to their show that will be up for their “Salon” this Fall. The cartoons keep pouring in. Some of my newest favorites are displayed below.
The New York Times isn’t alone in being timid about editorial cartoons. Cartoonists are buffeted on all sides by: timid liberal editors who don’t want to offend anyone; by conservative editors who say “we don’t like any of the cartoons anymore;” by offended readers who demand retribution against cartoonists and their timid publishers; and by cost cutting accountants at newspapers who see editorial cartoons as a troublesome expense that isn’t bringing in any advertising revenue.
We’re doing another fundraising push for our Cagle.com site – notice that we don’t run advertising on Cagle.com; the site is supported entirely by contributions from our readers. Cagle.com is the face of editorial cartooning to the world; we offend despots; we defend free speech. Editorial cartoons are important and endangered – we would really appreciate your support at this important time! Please visit Cagle.com/Heroes and consider making a donation to the cause.
My old buddy Jeff Parker retired from editorial cartooning some years ago, but came out of retirement to draw this one …
Anti-Vaxxers have been out in force, protesting California’s Senate Bill 276 that would make it harder for unethical doctors to grant bogus medical exemptions to parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children. Ignorant celebrities have been leading the charge. Last week we got stories about Justin Timberlake’s wife, Jessica Biel doing the lobbying rounds both evil. anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The dangerous, celebrity idiots don’t like to be called “anti-vaxxers,” they prefer to be described as “pro-informed consent,” or “pro-vaccine choice,” or “anti-forced vaccination,” or “vaccine risk aware,” all of which mean the same thing. Dangerous and ignorant. Here’s an cartoon about the anti-vaxxers that I drew three years ago …
Here are some of my favorite anti-vaxxer cartoons by my buddies – these first two are by Nate Beeler.
Around 1964, I did my very first animation job. It was for CBS and I got to work for the legendary Lou Dorfsman who shaped every aspect of corporate design for CBS in his 40 years there. I was tasked with creating ten, 10 second “teaser” spots which would be used at station breaks on the network.
CBS had just created a break-through technology they called VPA (Vote Profile Analysis) which would hopefully predict the outcome of elections, shortly after voting had begun, with supposedly, a high degree of accuracy. It was top secret. They were going to reveal it when the time was right and the job I had been assigned was to tease the public and build up curiosity until then. We would throw out the letters V P A to the viewers and make everybody wonder what the hell it meant in ten second bits between programs. We also popped the words “Vote Profile Analysis” in small letters in the last few seconds at the bottom of the screen.
So, my first animation experience was to be the manipulation of three simple black type letters into 10 arresting filmic arrangements.
I zoomed a “V” from a tiny dot on the screen to full screenrevolving it upside down while it was joined by “P” which had slid in from the right side. The upside down “V” became an “A” with the addition of the crossbar while the “P” disappeared.
I panned a “V” onto the screen, in another spot, zoomed in to the blackness of the letter and zoomed right back out to reveal that it was now a “P”, then back in and out to reveal the “A”.
I continued on in this fashion, zooming, panning and twirling the letters around through ten variations avoiding the more obvious approach of actually just manipulating the forms into each letter. I kept the letters whole all the time, maintaining their dignity as type forms and not succumbing to “Walt Disney” anthropomorphic transformation or just melding from one letter form to the other.. I felt that it described the “style” of CBS to keep it simple, black and white, elegant movement and transformation.
As simple as it was, and maybe because it was so simple, it became, I think, the most creative endeavor of my short animation career. It’s so compelling to get caught up in the rhythm of a job like that where the ideas just start popping into your brain. It’s good to have a time constraint to work around that forces you to be basic, direct and clean. No time to get “junky” in 10 seconds.
For weeks and weeks before they revealed their proud program that was going to beat all the competition in vote projection, we watched my VPA’s dance around for 10 seconds at every station break.
I haven’t been to the CBS building in many years, so I don’t know what it’s like now, but when I used to go into the building in those days, it wasn’t like going into any other big corporate building; it was carefully designed by Dorfsman (I guess), in every detail. There was the “CBS” typeface that was used everywhere down to the elevator buttons. When you arrived at your floor, there was a spacious waiting area wherein a receptionist sat a plain, clean desk. the décor was of a black and white or subtle grey: floor, rugs, walls, ceiling, etc.. Radiating off this main area there were long corridors going off to the different offices. At the far end of each corridor was the shock of a big square very brightly colored abstract painting. That was the only color. All aspects of the offices were rigidly controlled. Receptionists told me that they couldn’t have even a stray paper clip on their desk. Everything had a place that was design controlled and policed.
When you stepped into that building, you weren’t stepping into a building, you were stepping into a huge, formal piece of graphic design –cool, clean, elegant, black and white.
Down the block sat the NBC building, my next network client, a virtual riot of peacock color.
It was a warm October day in 1962. I was a sophomore at South Side High School in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, excelling in art class, in other subjects, not so much. I was on the staff of the school newspaper as a cartoonist and illustrator. My goals in life were to be an illustrator like Norman Rockwell, or have my own commercial art studio in my hometown, or to be an advertising agency art director and make $10,000 a year. This was 1962. Ten grand was big money.
I would get married, buy a house, have two children and a beautiful wife, drive a new car and, with any luck, be a millionaire by the time I was forty. Everything was going my way. Then, President John F. Kennedy told the nation that Russia had put nuclear armed ballistic missiles in Cuba and we’d have a nuclear war if they didn’t remove them. What?
I was completely blindsided. My parents subscribed to two newspapers, the Democratic morning one and the evening Republican. I read them both, but I only read the comics page and the sports page. I wasn’t even sure of the name of the Russian leader. Nikita who? The only Russians I knew of were Boris and Natasha on “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” Suddenly, my world went up in a ball of radioactive fire.
I was glued to TV news and the newspapers and when I wasn’t, I was painting apocalyptic paintings of skeletons running through a burning landscape of mushroom clouds. All my hopes and dreams were going up in radioactive smoke. A ship was steaming to Cuba loaded with more missiles. Kennedy told Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev to turn around or they would be blown out of the water. The Russians were not backing down and were making threats. I was frantic. My school had been having air raid drills since I was in Kindergarten. There was a huge air raid siren behind my house that went off every Wednesday at noon, so loud it shook the floor. This is what we’d been training for –this crisis.
Then, on the thirteenth day of the confrontation, the ships turned around and headed back to Russia, after Kennedy made a secret deal, but from that day forward I vowed never to be blindsided again. I started reading the news pages. I learned the names of the leaders at home and abroad. I learned the countries, the issues and the threats. I read the political cartoons, mostly those by Bill Mauldin, who I understood. Herblock and a local cartoonist were regulars in the papers but they didn’t inspire me. Their cartoons were too serious and preachy. Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” made more sense to me than most of the art on the editorial page. Then, when I was in art school, Pat Oliphant came along and made political cartooning look fun.
I saw a way that I could do my very small part to defeat the Communist Soviet Union threat and be paid for my effort. I started drawing freelance political cartoons for the morning paper, found a job as a full-time political cartoonist in Dayton, Ohio and after five years there, moved to Hartford, Connecticut and The Courant.
In November of 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. I told the president of the L. A. Times News Service that I’d accomplished my goal, that Russia had been defeated and that I was going to leave political cartooning. He talked me out of it, saying there will be more demons to vanquish. He was right, of course. All I have to do is read today’s news, but I’d accomplished what I wanted in the beginning. Everything since then is a bonus.
As I drew my bathtub cartoon today, I was thinking about my favorite bathtub cartoons. Really. This is Iran’s Supreme Leader having his clean, happy time.
Bathtub fun is a cartoonists’ staple. Here’s my buddy, Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune with a Trump tub.
My bathtub favorite is this Trump and Li’l Kim classic from Taylor Jones.
Here’s what Chinese cartoonist Luojie thinks of how Uncle Sam manages his toys.
Here’s the oil bath-time of death from Mexican cartoonist, Dario Castillejos.
It isn’t really a bathtub cartoon, but Dutch photo cartoonist Bart van Leeuwen has a similar (but better) take on the same theme as my cartoon, at the beach.
Bart’s magnum opus is this beach cartoon about Trump and his wall. Bart loves the beach.
Now that we ended up at the beach, I think I need another bath. Here’s an old Obama favorite that could work as a Trump cartoon today.
Cartoon protests continue to rage around the world, in response to the New York Times” decision to drop all editorial cartoons after they were criticized for for choosing to publish an anti-Semitic cartoon. Here’s another one from me …
You may notice that this blog and Cagle.comdon’t run advertising. Cagle.com is supported entirely from reader contributions –you make the site happen! Cagle.com is the face of editorial cartooning to the world.Please support us and our endangered art form with a contribution to keep our site up and keep our cartoonists drawing! Visit Cagle.com/Heroes, even if you’ve contributed before, even if you can only afford a tiny donation, we can’t let our important graphic voices go silent! Editorial cartoonists face extinction now more than ever before!
For more about the New York Times vs. Cartoonists, visit these past posts:
Here’s another cartooning memory from my brilliant buddy, Randy Enos, see Randy’s archive of editorial cartoons, email Randy Enos–Daryl
Most small town art stores around the country cater to children, hobbyists, crafts people or Sunday painters but not the one I went to for about 55 years in the small town of Westport, Ct.; they catered to all of the above but mainly they served the vast array of professional artists that lived in Westport since the 1950’s. This tiny art store, named Max’s, had a clientele that read like a Who’s Who of American illustration, painting, sculpture, cartooning and graphic art. When they sold drawing tables, portfolios, drawing paper, paint brushes, canvasses and all the other furnishings of an art studio, they sold the high-end professional grade of those products. There was stuff in there that the average civilian had no idea about and they had a small sales staff was well versed in all of it. They also had a tiny frame shop in the back room that was always busy.
It was first called “Fine Arts Stationery” (it was next door to the “Fine Arts Theater”). Then it became “Max’s Art Supplies” and then just “Max’s”. Max’s wasn’t just an art store, it was an oasis for the weary, work laden illustrators and cartoonists who labored in lonely solitude at their boards all day. Every time I went into the store, I would run into fellow cartoonists and illustrators and we’d sometimes talk shop for hours. It truly was a gathering place.
A woman named Shirley came to work at Max’s and ended up marrying Max, who had been a longtime divorced “ladies man.” I did a big linocut caricature of Max as a horned satyr for one of his birthdays and the framed portrait was placed next to the desk in their little cubby hole office in the rear of the store. It stayed there for many years until Max’s closed. During that time Max had grown a moustache so, instead of pulling the picture out of the frame to update it, I merely took a litho crayon and drew the appendage right on the glass. It stayed there and is still there in Shirley’s home.
Randy’s linocut portrait of Shirley.
Whenever Max or Shirley had a birthday, the drawings and home-made cards would flood in from some of the most famous artists in America like Bernie Fuchs, Robert Heindel, Bob Peak, Steven Dohanos, Eric von Schmidt, Chance Browne (Hi and Lois), Stan Drake (Heart of Juliet Jones), Hardie Gramatky (Little Toot), numerous top New Yorker artists and the like. They were hung all over the shop and even in the teensy bathroom which was often a popular stop in the lives of us wandering illustrators in downtown Westport. Over the years, two group photos were taken of all the staff and the artist customers standing in front of the tiny shop. In them the cartoonists, illustrators, graphic designers and animators are standing, some with their wives smiling at the camerawoman perched across the street on top of a truck.
Every month Max’s two front windows would feature the work of one of the artist/customer’s work. I can’t say it was all fun and games … yes, I can … it WAS all fun and games. One day Stan Drake and Dik Browne (Hagar) were in the shop. They had previously heard that Max had ordered a sh*t-load of some kind of artists’ glue by mistake because nobody wanted it and he was stuck with it. Stan and Dik mercilessly taunted poor Max all the time and this day was no exception. As they were leaving the store, Stan said to Dik (within earshot of Max), “Dik, I heard about this fantastic glue, Dave’s Glue and I can’t find the stuff and I really need it!” Max’s ears perked up just as the boys were going out the door and shouted, “Fellas, wait, wait!” The door slammed behind them and off they went to the left down past the sports shop with Max trotting behind yelling, “Fellas, fellas… wait… I got that stuff…” They made him chase them down to the end of the block and around the corner at Colgan’s drugstore.
As the computer age insinuated itself into the artistic community, Shirley, now alone after Max’s demise, was experiencing declining sales. For one thing, the illustrators and cartoonists were moving out of Westport which had turned into a thriving community of rich Wall St. types. I moved away myself to a nearby community and a horse farm. With the advent of computers and Photoshop, a lot of us didn’t require the envelopes, portfolios, drawing paper, and paints and brushes anymore. Shirley kept the business rolling along as best she could, operating at a loss for many years, sustaining herself with other properties she had on the street until finally she closed in a big farewell party which we all tearfully attended.
I just heard yesterday from a friend in Westport that the small building has been torn down and now a small empty lot is all that’s left of what was probably, the most illustrious art store this country has ever seen.
The New York Times’ stupid decision to stop publishing editorial cartoons is generating more articles around the world, and the world’s cartoonists are responding with lots of cartoons on the topic – some of the cartoons are more offensive than Antonio Antunes’ cartoon, and I won’t show them here, but I’ve posted some new ones here.
Courrier International, the great French news magazine that reprints lots of editorial cartoons by international cartoonists, asked me a bunch of questions for an upcoming article; I thought I would post my responses here.
1) As a cartoonist and founder of Cagle Syndicate Cartoon, what do you think of the incriminated cartoon by Antonio Moreira Antunes?
This is the famous, offending cartoon by Antonio Antunes.
I would have killed the cartoon if it came in to us. I can also see how the cartoon could have slipped through, without notice, since the cartoon didn’t feature an obvious, anti-Semitic, Der Stürmer cliché like depicting a Jew as a rat or spider.
The Antonio cartoon illustrates the trope that Jews manipulate the world’s non-Jews, with yarmulke-wearing Trump blindly following Jews, which are broadly indicated by the Star of David the Netanyahu-dog wears on his collar, rather than having the dog wear an Israeli flag which would indicate that Trump is led by Israel. When cartoonists mix anti-Israel and anti-Jewish metaphors, the cartoons should be killed. It isn’t about the dog, although the choice of a German Dachshund is provocative; the most common anti-Semitic cartoons depict Jews as Nazis.
This cartoon is by French cartoonist, Pierre Ballouhey. “Teckel” is French for Dachshund.
When we get an anti-Semitic cartoon from one of our cartoonists, I email the cartoonist letting him know why we killed his cartoon, and usually the cartoonist will say, “OK, I get it.” Over time, our cartoonists have learned where we draw the red lines and it is less of a problem for us. Anti-Semitic cartoons are so common around the world that the cartoonists are usually unaware that their cartoons are offensive.
2) Did the decision made by the NYT surprise you (that is : did you see it coming?)? What’s your reaction?
The Times doesn’t run editorial cartoons in their USA edition and has a long history of being cartoon-unfriendly, so their decision to stop running cartoons in their international edition didn’t surprise me.
Cartoon by Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune.
I was mostly surprised that the Times suddenly cut off their relationship with their partner, Cartoonarts International Syndicate, because of the poor decision of a Times editor. Cartoonarts is a family business that has worked with the Times for nearly twenty years, with the Times handling all of Cartoonarts’ sales and online delivery services, which were suddenly cut off. The announcement that the Times would “stop using syndicated cartoons” didn’t describe how brutal their reaction was to a small business that relied on their long-running partnership and support from the Times.
Cartoon by Milt Priggee.
3) Many cartoonists (Chapatte and Kroll, among others) reacted to the NYT’s decision saying : it is a bad time for cartoons, caricature, humor and derision. Do you agree with this appreciation?
Yes, jobs with newspapers are mostly a thing of the past for editorial cartoonists. Outrage is easy to express on the internet and often takes the form of demands for revenge on the publication and the cartoonist who offended the reader. Newspapers are responsive to organized online outrage and shy away from controversy. Cartoons draw more response from readers than words, and responses are usually negative as people who agree with the cartoons are not motivated to email the newspaper.
Cartoon by Hassan Bleibel from Lebanon.
When did things begin to turn ugly, and why?
Editorial cartoonists are in the same, sinking boat as all journalists. Things turned ugly when the internet took the advertising revenue away from print.
Is there a US specificity in this context, especially since Donald Trump was elected president?
Not regarding Donald Trump. I’ve drawn Trump as a dog, and I’ve drawn Netanyahu as a dog. Cartoonists love to draw politicians as dogs. Anti-Semitic cartoons are common around the world but are not common in the USA where editors do a good job of recognizing and killing offensive cartoons.
Cartoon by Neils Bo Bojesen from Denmark.
4) Why is it important to defend cartoonists and press cartoons, according to you? (or: do you think a world without cartoons and caricature has become a serious eventuality? Can you imagine such a world?) What should be done to defend this form of journalistic expression? 5) As a cartoonist and founder of Cagle Syndicate Cartoon, what would you say about the role played by social medias? Do you see them rather as a useful tool or a threat to a good and sound public debate? Or somewhere in between?
It is troubling that so many people get their news through social media. Social media has taken the advertising revenue away from traditional news media – both online and in print – so journalism is being starved. Editorial cartoonists are no different than other journalists; we’re underpaid freelancers now; we draw for love rather than because of any good business sense.
Cartoon by Arcadio Esquivel from Costa Rica.
I run an editorial cartoons site for readers at Cagle.com, and we stopped running advertising on the site. We rely on donations from readers to support Cagle.com. Other publications are going non-profit and relying on donations to support their journalism – I’m impressed with Pro-Publica and the Texas Tribune. The Guardian has been successful with support from their readers.
Cartoon fans who worry about our profession can support us by going to Cagle.com/Heroes and making a small contribution. We really appreciate everyone’s support!
Cartoon by Dale Cummings from Canada.
Cartoon by Nikola Listes from Croatia.
Want to see more of my posts about the New York Times’ ugly, recent history with editorial cartoons?
Yesterday we learned that the NY Times terminated the contracts with their two cartoonists who have been regular contributors to the NY Times International edition, Swiss Cagle Cartoonist Patrick Chappatte and Heng Kim Song from Singapore.
The offending Antonio Antunes cartoon that lost a job for Patrick Chappatte, crushed a syndicate and lost a top venue for all editorial cartooning.
By choosing not to print editorial cartoons in the future, the Times can be sure that their editors will never again make a poor cartoon choice. Editors at the Times have also made poor choices of words in the past. I would suggest that the Times should also choose not to print words in the future –just to be on the safe side. –Daryl Cagle
Patrick learned that he lost the gig in an online announcement from the Times, which later expanded on the subject with a self-serving statement from their editorial page editor, James Bennett, bragging that the Times won a Pulitzer Prize in the editorial cartooning category – though he fails to mention that the prize was for a non-fiction piece where a writer wrote a script that was illustrated by a cartoonist –not what I would call a prize for an editorial cartoonist.
Patrick posted this Charlie Hebdo cartoon with his announcement.
The end of political cartoons at The New York Times
All my professional life, I have been driven by the conviction that the unique freedom of political cartooning entails a great sense of responsibility.
In 20-plus years of delivering a twice-weekly cartoon for the International Herald Tribune first, and then The New York Times, and after receiving three OPC awards in that category, I thought the case for political cartoons had been made (in a newspaper that was notoriously reluctant to the form in past history.) But something happened. In April 2019, a Netanyahu caricature from syndication reprinted in the international editions triggered widespread outrage, a Times apology and the termination of syndicated cartoons. Last week, my employers told me they’ll be ending in-house political cartoons as well by July. I’m putting down my pen, with a sigh: that’s a lot of years of work undone by a single cartoon – not even mine – that should never have run in the best newspaper of the world.
I’m afraid this is not just about cartoons, but about journalism and opinion in general. We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in.
Over the last years, with the Cartooning for Peace Foundation we established with French cartoonist Plantu and the late Kofi Annan – a great defender of cartoons – or on the board of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, I have consistently warned about the dangers of those sudden (and often organized) backlashes that carry everything in their path. If cartoons are a prime target it’s because of their nature and exposure: they are an encapsulated opinion, a visual shortcut with an unmatched capacity to touch the mind. That’s their strength, and their vulnerability. They might also be a revealor of something deeper. More than often, the real target, behind the cartoon, is the media that published it.
“Political cartoons were born with democracy.
And they are challenged when freedom is.“
In 1995, at twenty-something, I moved to New York with a crazy dream: I would convince the New York Times to have political cartoons. An art director told me: “We never had political cartoons and we will never have any.“ But I was stubborn. For years, I did illustrations for NYT Opinion and the Book Review, then I persuaded the Paris-based International Herald Tribune (a NYT-Washington Post joint venture) to hire an in-house editorial cartoonist. By 2013, when the NYT had fully incorporated the IHT, there I was: featured on the NYT website, on its social media and in its international print editions. In 2018, we started translating my cartoons on the NYT Chinese and Spanish websites. The U.S. paper edition remained the last frontier. Gone out the door, I had come back through the window. And proven that art director wrong: The New York Times did have in-house political cartoons. For a while in history, they dared.
Along with The Economist, featuring the excellent Kal, The New York Times was one of the last venues for international political cartooning – for a U.S. newspaper aiming to have a meaningful impact worldwide, it made sense. Cartoons can jump over borders. Who will show the emperor Erdogan that he has no clothes, when Turkish cartoonists can’t do it ? – one of them, our friend Musa Kart, is now in jail. Cartoonists from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Russia were forced into exile. Over the last years, some of the very best cartoonists in the U.S., like Nick Anderson and Rob Rogers, lost their positions because their publishers found their work too critical of Trump. Maybe we should start worrying. And pushing back. Political cartoons were born with democracy. And they are challenged when freedom is.
“The power of images has never been so big.“
Curiously, I remain positive. This is the era of images. In a world of short attention span, their power has never been so big. Out there is a whole world of possibilities, not only in editorial cartooning, still or animated, but also in new fields like on-stage illustrated presentations and long-form comics reportage – of which I have been a proponent for the last 25 years. (I’m happy, by the way, to have opened the door for the genre at the NYT with the “Inside Death Row“ series in 2016. The following year, another series about Syrian refugees by Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan got the NYT a Pulitzer prize.) It’s also a time where the media need to renew themselves and reach out to new audiences. And stop being afraid of the angry mob. In the insane world we live in, the art of the visual commentary is needed more than ever. And so is humor.
Robert is an editorial cartoonist and a longtime contributor to our Cagle.com site and our syndication package; he’s the beloved “dean” of the French political cartoonists. (Although some may call him the “titan,” I prefer the “dean.”
Robert is 82 years old and although he’s been drawing editorial cartoons for many decades, this is his first book! The excellent, French satirical magazine “Zelium” is managing this campaign for Robert, who wrote this note:
In 1978, the Times workers went on strike. They were out for quite a while. No New York Times! Some guys from the Lampoon plus the author 
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CBS had just created a break-through technology they called VPA (Vote Profile Analysis) which would hopefully predict the outcome of elections, shortly after voting had begun, with supposedly, a high degree of accuracy. It was top secret. They were going to reveal it when the time was right and the job I had been assigned was to tease the public and build up curiosity until then. We would throw out the letters V P A to the viewers and make everybody wonder what the hell it meant in ten second bits between programs. We also popped the words “Vote Profile Analysis” in small letters in the last few seconds at the bottom of the screen.
Every month Max’s two front windows would feature the work of one of the artist/customer’s work. I can’t say it was all fun and games … yes, I can … it WAS all fun and games. One day 
