Last week, a story was making the rounds about a column written about suburban Chicago newspaper running television ads boasting of the awards won by a cartoonist it had fired months before. On the surface, it seems pretty slimy, and it seems pretty juicy. No surprise it picked up steam. Criticizing the heartless newspaper companies is about as fashionable as it gets in the cartooning world.

But now Editor & Publisher has a follow-up that shows the good guys and bad guys might not be as obvious as initially suspected, particularly since the media ethics critic who wrote the original column didn’t even talk to some of the people he quoted and misled some of those he actually did speak to.

No disrespect to anyone else, but one of the coolest wedding presents we got came from our friends Van and Amy Jensen. Van and I used to work together at the Daily Nebraskan, and he has since moved on to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette as I have moved along to my freelance cartooning career. Well, long before Van ever went to the DemGaz, I knew of cartoonist John Deering from other friends that worked there. I’m admittedly probably too hard on the whole world of editorial cartooning on this site, but there are a handful of cartoonists whose work I really admire, Deering being one of them, and most of the rest are listed over in the links section. Van has since come to know Deering, and the two are working on a graphic novel together and have started their own Drink & Draw Social Club.

So the other day, I was looking around on the internet and saw Deering’s cartoon with Transformers in it, and I was simultaneously thinking “This cartoon is awesome” and “Dangit, why didn’t I think of that?” It was that perfect kind of professional envy when you wished you’d found a way to make a point that well (and found a way to justify drawing Transformers in an editorial cartoon, which I have only succeeded at twice in the past 8 years).

Well I was very excited to open a package that came in the mail the other day – our present from Van and Amy, who weren’t able to make it to the wedding – and find the original of this cartoon. I am now a proud parent of a John Deering original.

Thanks, guys!

I just received this e-mail in response to this cartoon:

Hi, Neal. The Mayor’s office got a big chuckle out of Sunday’s cartoon! However, it inaccurately stated the Mayor’s position on the issue of Harry Potter. To set the record straight, Mayor Beutler will be making a generous personal donation to Lincoln City Libraries at 9:45 a.m. tomorrow at the Eiseley branch, 1530 Superior. He would like to invite you to attend to acknowledge you and your cartoon for inspiring his donation. He will further demonstrate his interesting public persona at that time.

Although some will probably use this as evidence of a secret liberal conspiracy between the cartoonist and Democratic mayor, I do think it’s kind of cool that it inspired him to make a donation. I can’t make it, but I’m curious to see how the mayor’s “interesting public persona” will manifest itself at the appearance…

(and for the record, I’ve never met the guy or spoken a word to him, so if there is a secret liberal conspiracy, it is also secret from me.)

UPDATE!!! I have been informed that I am now known as “He Who Must Not Be Named” at City Hall…

UPDATE UPDATE!! Here’s a copy of the press release for the scrapbook, mom.

Here is the original sketch presented to my editor:

Continue reading →

Three down, three to go – today. It’s almost 5:00 and I’m so far averaging about 2 hours per cartoon, which is pretty good (I already had the ideas approved, so it’s just drawing time).

This has been a good day for digging up cds I haven’t played in a while. I’ve been listening to a “Red Hot + Lisbon” compilation, Cause & Effect’s self-titled album, Tobin Sprout’s “Let’s Welcome the Circus People,” and now I’m on “Heathen Chemistry” by Oasis. I’d forgotten how much I liked this album. In the queue, I have “Like a Prayer” by Madonna, “Beethoven Was Deaf” by Morrissey, the double-disc deluxe edition of Tears for Fears’ “Songs from the Big Chair” and Method Man’s “Tical 2000: Judgement Day” lined up.

I have six cartoons to draw today and four to draw tomorrow so that I can be gone for the wedding and honeymoon. I’m off to a slow start today and already breaking for lunch, but I’m really hungry and we have no groceries.

Keeping me company musically this morning is “If I Were a Carpenter,” the 1994 tribute to the Carpenters packed with early-mid 90s “alternative” bands – the Cranberries, Dishwalla, Cracker and Grant Lee Buffalo, the beginnings of what would become Pretty and Twisted, and a fantastic cover of “Superstar” by Sonic Youth.

Starting Sunday, my Lincoln Journal Star schedule will be changing slightly, and therefore my cartoon posting on this site will change as well.

Instead of running on Mondays and Thursdays as I have since starting in July of 2004, I will now be on Sundays and Wednesdays (the “big” days in terms of readership and circulation).

To accommodate Wednesday as a new Journal Star day, I’m going to bump the San Diego Reader cartoon to Thursday. The SD Reader doesn’t hit stands until Thursday anyway, but they post their content online Wednesday afternoons, which is why I had been posting them Wednesday afternoons. So if you can’t wait half a day, you can still go to their site and see my cartoon on Wednesday. But here, I’m going to bump it to Thursday morning just so it doesn’t get too crowded with cartoons.

So lets run through the schedule of cartoons on this site:

Sunday: Lincoln Journal Star cartoon
Tuesday: Omaha Reader cartoon
Wednesday: Lincoln Journal Star cartoon
Thursday: San Diego Reader

And then occasional blogs and national cartoons will be scattered throughout.

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists have their own article up on the Journal Star’s severed ties with freelance cartoonist Paul Fell, with some misleading, inaccurate information.

The unsigned article reports:

The newsroom ethics code at the Journal-Star forbids political contributions by staffers who are involved in political coverage. A staff reporter at the paper who also made a political donation was allowed to keep her job after admitting she violated the ethics code and apologized. Fell, however, was let go.

(emphasis added)

The apparent double-standard presented by the article is a little less controversial when it’s pointed out that the Journal Star employee in question was not a staff reporter, as erroneously claimed in the AAEC article, but instead a copy editor. (I have e-mailed the AAEC website about this error, but as of 1:45pm Tuesday they have yet to correct the story. It may seem like an insignificant error, but I think the wording implies that Paul was held to an unfair double-standard, which would be much more pronounced if a reporter were involved.)

Regardless, this has been an interesting story to follow. Here’s the timeline so far, as covered in my previous two posts here and here.

June 22
MSNBC: The list: Journalists who wrote political checks

June 23
Lincoln Journal Star: Political contributions list includes two from Journal Star

June 25
Daily Cartoonist: Paul Fell loses gig after flippant remark about newspaper’s ethical policy
MSNBC: TV reporter who backed candidate is out
AAEC: Fell forced out of long-time Lincoln gig

And for those who think the Democrat to Republican ratio somehow proves the liberal media bias, check out this data from opensecrets.org regarding communications and electronics PAC contributions to federal candidates in 05-06:

Printing & Publishing:
27% to Democrats
72% to Republicans

TV / Movies / Music:
44% to Democrats
56% to Republicans

Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist has an update on the Paul Fell situation that I wrote about the other day with some response from Fell:

“My comments in the MSNBC.com interview were pretty angry and if I had been less truthful and snarky, pleaded ignorance and begged forgiveness from the Journal Star, I‚Äôd probably still be freelancing for them. The fact is, I had backed them into a corner where they had no choice but to give me the axe.”

It’s nice to see with that admission that even if he disagrees with the fundamentals of the termination (freelancers not being informed of the ethics policy; policies applying to freelancers and employees equally; etc.) he realizes that his reaction put everyone in a tough place.

Gardner goes on to say “Paul doesn‚Äôt appear to deflated about this latest turn of events as he is already in talks with other publishing outlets for his cartoons.” He’s a pretty big cartooning celebrity in Nebraska, with a very recognizable style, so I’m guessing he’ll be as fine as a cartoonist can be in 2007.

UPDATE!!! Suburban Guerilla shares some thoughts on this issue, particularly relating to the increasingly popular use of the freelancer in the media and what rights that does or does not grant the client and the provider.

UPDATE UPDATE!!! Bill “I’ll Get You Fired” Dedman has some follow-up at MSNBC on who’s gotten canned and cut across the country as a result of his records-checking. Interestingly enough, the two big stories are both out of Nebraska – the aforementioned Paul Fell situation and Calvert Collins, the reporter with a crush on Jim Esch.

Dedman linked to a PDF of Fell’s reply, in which, while justifying his anger toward the Journal Star, he includes this line: “Then, to add insult to injury, two years ago the paper goes and hires another freelancer to draw local cartoons.” Does this mean I made the national news, ma?

Anyway, another little part of Dedman’s story jumped out at me:

Collins told MSNBC.com last month that her father made the $500 donation in her name. She also said that her father had made a $2,000 donation in her name to Kay Granger, a Republican congresswoman from Texas in 2004, when Collins was a student in broadcast journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Can someone who doesn’t like me make a campaign contribution in my name to get me fired?