Fri Mar 23, 2007 — by Elayne Riggs

State of newspaper cartooning

Two mainstream articles give coverage

Via Tom Spurgeon, The Tacoma Daily Index's Todd Matthews examines the current state and status of political and editorial cartoonists, with an emphasis on the Washington state papers.  Quotes like "The state of newspaper cartooning nationally is not a happy one" and "Political cartoonists are a dying breed" do not seem to bode well.

Similarly, via Heidi, Lev Grossman at Time Magazine also observes that "Comic strips in newspapers are dying. They're starved for space, crushed down to a fraction of their original size. They're choked creatively by ironfisted syndicates and the 1950s-era family values that newspapers impose."  and like Matthews, Grossman is hopeful that the new media will be the savior of editorial cartoons and strips, taking a more in-depth look at webcomics.

ComicMix will continue to follow the death and rebirth of these well-established artformsm, to see how well newspaper features can still flourish without being in the newspapers themselves.

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