The canary in the cartoon coal mine

First thing’s first: I’m sorry that I’ve not posted in a while. Back in August a friend of mine asked if I could take over teaching her university class. Teaching that class has been very rewarding, but it’s taking up a good chunk of my week. Add in a cartoon, freelance work, some health issues, while also trying to have a life, and I haven’t had much time or energy to devote to this Substack. Things will settle down in a month or so. Hopefully that will be the start of much more regular content.

I was recently invited to give a talk at The American Sign Museum here in Cincinnati. The Sign Museum is one of my favorite hidden gems. It’s a shrine dedicated to rescued and refurbished signs big and small, a massive hit of nostalgia and classic Americana.

My talk was titled “Signs and Symbols in Editorial Cartoons.” I took a look at the history of symbolism in American editorial cartoons, from Ben Franklin’s “Join, or Die”, the first political cartoon published in the New World, to Thomas Nast’s modernization and popularization of the Democratic Donkey, the Republican Elephant, and Uncle Sam. I then went into how I use those and other visual metaphors in my own cartoons, and why I make the creative choices I do.

The last part of my speech was about editorial cartoonists being canaries in a coal mine. That’s a common phrase used often used by my editorial cartoonist friends and colleagues to describe the state of our industry. Editorial cartoonists were usually among the most recognizable staff members at newspapers. A newspaper laying off or offering a buyout too their cartoonist, with no plan to replace that cartoonist, was a sign that the paper was in financial trouble.

There was a Q&A at the end of the talk, and some of the audience members asked me about my time as a cartoonist with local Cincinnati news media, namely WCPO-TV, where I drew cartoons and comics from 2014-2019, and The Cincinnati Enquirer, where I contributed a weekly cartoon from 2020-2023. I was asked about why I left those positions, and as usual I was fairly guarded with my answers. 

But with Jeff Bezos killing the Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the 2024 election, the similar action taken by the owner of the Los Angeles Times, and the deafening silence by Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the United States, I’ve decided to speak a bit more openly about why I left WCPO and The Enquirer. I was a canary in a coal mine when it came to the moral cowardice of news media capitulating to fear.

I felt like the luckiest guy when I started drawing editorial cartoons for WCPO-TV in 2014. The station had built a digital newsroom that was quasi-separate from the TV side. It was a proverbial island of misfit toys, staffed by a bunch of us Cincinnati newspaper folk who no longer had a newspaper to call their own. We had long form features, investigative journalism, innovative video and more. And there was me, drawing up to five cartoons a week, plus writing and drawing comics journalism pieces. I don’t know if I knew how good I had it, but damn, I had it good.

I was limited to drawing one sports cartoon about the Cincinnati Reds or Bengals my first year working with WCPO. I was OK with that; it was a trial period. Once I’d established myself, WCPO had me draw three cartoons a week about whatever I wanted. My first non-sports cartoon was about the death of a transgender high school student. I drew about local politics and national politics and global issues. Industry trades took note of what I was doing, and I gained some recognition from the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. (I’m currently the AAEC’s vice president.) Politico reached out about including my cartoons in its weekly Cartoon Carousel. The Week, which still champions cartoons, also reached out about having me submit. And Andrews McMeel offered me an online syndication deal. My work as an editorial cartoonist didn’t just bring me notoriety. It helped elevate what we were doing at WCPO.

Everything changed in during the 2016 election. Sure, I’d gotten my share of angry emails from Trumpers. That was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was the shift from my managers and even some of my coworkers.

TV stations don’t have the same tradition of running opinion content that newspapers have. I discovered some my cartoons, which had been posted to WCPO’s social media pages, were frequently being deleted by some of the station’s anchors. One of the morning anchors, completely unprompted, stopped me in the middle of the newsroom and blatantly asked why I had been hired and questioned whether I was even a journalist. When my immediate supervisor wrote a column that disparaged the Bengals, the TV side demanded to have a day-long series of meetings to discuss their concerns about opinion pieces. Even though I had nothing to do with the Bengals column, I was asked to sit in those meetings, which devolved into a referendum on my cartoons.

I noticed more and more of my Trump- or GOP-focused cartoon ideas were being shot down. I got into a shouting match with my immediate editor, who didn’t want me to run a cartoon calling Robert E. Lee a slaveholder and traitor.

Eventually I was asked to meet with the top managers at the station. I was told I was no longer going to be doing any “national” cartoons. None of the managers ever outright said it, but I knew what they meant: No more cartoons about Trump. 

Even in 2017 we knew Trump was a narcissistic fascist, obsessed with power and grievances. He was — and still is — racist garbage who feeds his supporters’ darkest impulses. I felt it was my job to call that out for our market. Yes, Cincinnati proper is an island of blue surrounded in a sea of suburban and rural red. But that shouldn’t mean I should stop calling out the racism and sexism and fascism of MAGA. I challenged the managers on this. But none of them would give me a straight answer, hiding behind half-truths and euphemisms.

What really exposed their bullshit was when one of the managers said, “No one looks to us for national coverage.” I immediately pointed to the TV behind them, where one of our anchors was talking about national political news. They had no real retort, and continued to circle the drain rather than giving me an honest answer.

Had they come right out and said it, that they were taking flack internally and externally because I was drawing anti-Trump cartoons and that I’d henceforth be limited to local cartoons, I’d still have been pissed off. But I would have at least respected them for being forthright, rather than cowering behind their half-baked excuses. I knew right then and there they had no backbones. 

And it’s not that I wouldn’t have been OK with just doing local cartoons. I love local cartoons, and believe they’re even more important than national cartoons. What I objected to were the chickenshit limitations suddenly placed on me because the managers at WCPO were more worried about offending Trumpers — both in their audience and in their newsroom — than having a cartoonist take a stand against the hate and division Trump represents.

Within a year even my local editorial cartoons were being cut down. Eventually I was told to stop drawing editorial cartoons altogether. When I tried to argue, my manager put her foot down and said “You know how I feel.” It took a few months to get things in place, but at that moment I had mentally quit WCPO. 

The day after I left the station I was contacted by The Cincinnati Enquirer, asking if I’d consider doing a weekly cartoon for them. 

Right out of the gate I was told I’d only be doing local cartoons. I got the spiel that no one in Cincinnati ever looks to The Enquirer for national coverage or opinion. Again, I was fine just drawing local cartoons. What I wasn’t OK with was how that was presented. From jump I knew the Enquirer editors were afraid of their MAGA audience. 

I was still drawing national cartoons for Andrews McMeel’s GoComics. Those cartoons weren’t for wider syndication. But I began noticing they were appearing in USA Today and in other Gannett newspapers. When I called USA Today out on it, I was told they assumed those cartoons were drawn for The Enquirer. It seems that out of all the Gannett papers that ran cartoons, only The Enquirer had restrictions against Trump-focused cartoons. 

(One more aside about Gannett in general: A Gannett newspaper editor in Florida emailed me asking why I wasn’t running more national cartoons as apparently my work was popular. I explained the situation, and then said I’d be happy to sell them national cartoons on a freelance basis. The editor’s response: “Could you start doing conservative cartoons? We have enough liberal cartoonists already.”)

I could go on about The Enquirer killing my JD Vance cartoon, or about how I earned more in one day renting out my car to a video production company than I did for drawing two cartoons for The Enquirer and the Akron Beacon Journal (also now a Gannett rag). Or how I had to fight for days off from WCPO even though I nearly singlehandedly saved one of their financial quarters. But that’s not the point I’m making.

My point is that they decided they couldn’t take a hard stance against fascism and ignorance. They couldn’t stand against those who tried and still try to tear our democracy down. They’re too afraid of speaking truth to power. They don’t want to alienate anyone, even if that means ignoring the dangers to our democracy. The sad thing is that if Trump or a future MAGA candidate become president, journalists will be among their first targets. They are aiding and abetting those who’d put them up against the proverbial firing squad.

During my talk, I said I was the last Cincinnati editorial cartoonist. It didn’t hit until a few minutes later that I will probably be the very last cartoonist to work for Cincinnati news media. I wish it weren’t so, but Gannett no longer hires cartoonists, and WCPO will never bring me back. I can’t imagine any of the other Cincinnati media hiring me or a future cartoonist. 

It was, and still is, an honor to have worked at both WCPO and The Enquirer. It was, and still is, an honor to have been my hometown’s editorial cartoonist. I’m saddened that my tenure with both of those institutions overlapped with the Trump era, and that instead of leaning into a stance against everything Trump stands for, I was presented with milquetoast excuses as to why I had to restrict my work.

We’re at a transitional point in our history. My hope is one day all news outlets, whether local or national, will call out the dangers to our democracy without worrying whether it will affect their bottom lines. And that they won’t be worried about whether their cartoonists ruffle fascist feathers.

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