[The following was a guest column written for the Los Angeles Times in November 2005.
It got killed at the last minute however, and never ran É gee, I wonder why?]
A Modest Proposal
Two weeks ago, in an LA Times article announcing the axing of editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez, several statistics from a piece I had written for Nieman Reports about disappearing cartoonist jobs at newspapers nationwide were cited.
I had considered responding to the news at that time, but the outpouring of outrage and annoyance from readers said much of what I wanted to say. I might have included a few additional statistics, such as that numerous reader surveys in recent years have consistently placed the editorial cartoon, particularly by a paper's own staff cartoonist, as one of THE top items readers look for, or that in 2005, during a period when newspapers were hemorrhaging subscribers, one of the few papers in the country to actually grow in circulation was the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina -- and they added TWO MORE cartoonists to their roster this year. (A coincidence? I'll leave that up to you.)
I could have asked what the Los Angeles Times intended to do with the space formerly occupied by the editorial cartoon. Did they really think an additional 12 column inches of text -- the equivalent of one more letter to the editor, or, 250 more words by, say, a Jonah Goldberg -- would have anywhere near the visceral impact or insight of a single Ramirez cartoon? Will simply providing more words stop the stampede of readers to other media?
Or did they intend to use that open space to sell advertising? In many ways, this recent decision does come down to money (as Ramirez himself mentioned in the Nov. 11 article), but does management believe they can keep up the paper's double-digit profits by getting rid of big name staff members? Does the Tribune Company, which owns the Times, really think that trimming the salary of a cartoonist will help them pay off the nearly $1 billion they may owe to the IRS?
Apparently so.
In the last two weeks, the Tribune Company has given take-it-or-leave buyout offers to at least two other staff cartoonists at prominent newspapers it owns, and are considering giving the same to three more as part of a chain-wide reduction in newsroom employees. And as at the Times with Ramirez, it is widely considered these editorial positions will be eliminated entirely.
Since it is clear now that Tribune is targeting cartoonists, I would like to make a modest proposal.
Sure, they can save some money by firing Ramirez and the others, but that's shortsighted; they're only using part of what we have to offer. Do you have any idea what organs bring on the black market these days? A good heart and set of lungs can easily get you 50 grand. While our spleens may be shot from overuse, kidneys, livers and gall bladders are all in great shape. And do I really have to point out how prized the eyes of an artist might be?
But you're right, simply harvesting our organs isn't going to be enough. Therefore you may as well be sporting about it and auction off hunting rights. There must be SCORES of politicians, public officials, and celebrities who would happy to shell out big bucks for a shot at the editorial cartoonists who mocked them and made their lives miserable. Why, Pat Oliphant's head alone would be worth half a mil or more.
(Granted, Paul Conrad --who won two Pulitzers for the Times --is getting up there in years, but if you gave him a 10-15 minute head start it would at least make things more interesting.)
I know, I know, these are all short-term solutions --and Tribune executives will soon be asking about the next year, the next quarter.
Well, there's always the features department.
[J.P. Trostle is a cartoonist for The Chapel Hill Herald in North Carolina, and the editor of "Attack of the Political Cartoonists." His article "The Evaporating Editorial Cartoonist" appeared in the Winter 2004 edition of Nieman Reports.]