Cartoonists With Attitude

I can’t believe how fast this year is going! It’s already been six months since I lost my job and home. It doesn’t seem like that long. My severance package is now over, as is my health insurance. I guess I may get COBRA, depending on how much it costs. Unless I start bringing in a decent income, in a few more months I’m going to hit a financial wall. I’m relieved about the 13-week extension of unemployment, pathetic as the amount is in Florida. Florida’s unemployment compensation is crap — the upper limit is $275/week, no matter how much was earned on the job. In Massachusetts, it goes up to $600/week.

In spite of financial and housing woes, I’m pretty happy overall. I **LOVE** not going to an office!!! Oh my god, I’m so grateful to have any amount of time not having a job. I love working at my own pace on my own things. I LOOOOOOOVE not being trapped in a cubicle, and not having anyone telling me what to do. I love being creative and working hard and late on things I care about.

I worked at a small weekly paper, and several others were laid off after me. The local daily paper, the Sun-Sentinel, just laid off about 55 people last week. The Palm Beach Post recently laid off 300. It’s unbelievable how fast newspapers are disintegrating. In my opinion, one huge reason is that they’re publicly traded companies — they’re forced to obsess about inflating the next quarter’s stock price, to the detriment of long-term planning. Of course they also have a huge problem with advertisers moving to the internet, but I’ve heard that privately held papers are coping with that much better than the publicly held ones. Also, it seems obvious that when newspaper chains are bought in deals wherein the papers themselves are used as collateral for huge debt, and if profits fall at all, the result will be the cannibalization of the properties to pay off the debt. Duh.

The stupidity and greed of a few rich motherfuckers ruins many lives. Constantly and in an infinite number of ways.

Since becoming self-employed I’ve worked hard, but I often feel like I’m not doing everything I need to do. I work too slow. I’ve got to pick up the pace.

Although… I did draw 36 cartoons in three weeks before going to San Diego. That’s not bad. And I sent out about 80 mailings during that time. Maybe I just feel like I’m lagging right now because of recent traveling. I have so much I want to do and time is going fast.

I have a very long list of tasks, but my short immediate list (other than keeping up with Minimum Security) is this:

- six more pages for a graphic novel proposal
- 20 single-panel cartoons for a short list of magazines
- drawings to catch up with 5 of Derrick Jensen’s “Endgame” classes

* * * *

In the Minimum Security comic from 7/30, there’s a warm moment between mother and son, over quickly. Click on the fragment below for the full cartoon at comics.com:

The more you click on my cartoons at comics.com, the better the chances they’ll appear in daily city papers, some day in the unknown future. If you like Minimum Security, please see a new cartoon each weekday!

Last week Mr. Slowpoke was reading the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail online when he came across the advertisement described in the first panel. (Unfortunately, I neglected to take a screen shot and can no longer find the ad.) The thought of America trying to lure businesses away from our more socially-responsible northern neighbor with entreaties of corporate welfare and desperate workers struck us as depressing and pathetic. I realize this sort of race to the bottom is nothing new, but it seems a particularly telling example of how far down the crapper we’ve gone.

While researching the Arizona Department of Commerce, I came across the website of a different (non-government) entity, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, whose “Good Bills/Bad Bills” page is a marvel of obliviousness to the public good. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, the very last “Bad Bill” is one requiring some divestment from Sudan. The bill is panned as a form of “over-regulation.” I’m sorry, but if you’re such a market fundamentalist that you can’t see the problem with funding genocide, there is no hope for you. You’re little more than a cult member in a suit, and you’ve demonstrated to me exactly WHY you need to have your ass regulated. Figuratively speaking, that is. I hope.

*WHADDAYA MEAN YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME ABOUT SISKO AND RIKER?!!

http://www.pvponline.com/2008/07/29/stewards-of-the-moment/

Comic-Con wrap-up coming soon.

Unfortunately, the following items are not intended ironically. First, this Randy Bish cartoon from yesterday. It’s a strange maudlin mishmash of the tribute cartoon and the summer superhero analogy cartoon.

(click here to view)

Randy Bish Tribune-Review Jul 29, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Then there was this Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, titled “What Bush and Batman Have in Common.” No, it’s not about their respective daddy issues. Andrew Klavan sat down and typed the following without a hint of irony and saw that it was good:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,�? currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

THIS WEEK’S SYNDICATED COLUMN: NEWS DOES NOT WANT TO BE FREE

Three Cures for Ailing Newspapers

“I feel I’m being catapulted into another world, a world I don’t really understand,” Denis Finley told the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Finley, editor of the Virginian-Pilot, isn’t the only newspaper executive who can’t come up with a plan for the future. “Only 5 percent of [newspaper editors and publishers],” finds Pew’s latest analysis of the nation’s 1217 daily newspapers, “said they were very confident of their ability to predict what their newsrooms would look like five years from now.”

Newspapers are in trouble. More people read them than ever, but most of them read them online, for free. Unfortunately online advertising rates are too low to make up for declining print circulation. A reader of The New York Times’ print edition generates about 170 times as much revenue as someone who surfs NYTimes.com. (This is because print readers spend 47 minutes with the paper. Online browsers visit the paper’s website a mere seven minutes–some of which they might not even be sitting in front of their computers.)

Newspaper executives don’t know what to do. Papers are closing foreign bureaus and laying off thousands of reporters. No matter how many employees they fire, however, they can’t slash or burn their way to profitability–there just isn’t enough budget to cut in a future where income has dropped to 1/170th.

“Newspapers,” writes San Jose State University business professor Joel West, “face two structural problems and have been unable to fix either one.” One is the Web in general, which offers advertisers more, finely targeted access to readers. The other is news on the Web, which is free on sites like Google and Yahoo (which compile AP and other wire service stories), as well as the newspaper websites themselves.

“OK,” argues West, “The New York Times or the big city daily has better news, but how much better? If it’s $20/month (or even $10 or merely requires a login) will readers bother? Most won’t. As with other commodities, better loses to ‘good enough.’”

But it doesn’t have to. If publishers take three audacious but absolutely essential steps, the print newspaper industry can save itself. All three of my suggestions are predicated on the simplest principle of capitalism: scarcity increases demand.

Newspapers have made news free and plentiful, which is why they’re going broke.

First: newspapers should go offline. If the last decade has proven anything, it’s that you can’t charge for a product–in this case, news–that you give away. So stop! All the members of the Newspaper Association of America should shut down their websites. At the very least, papers ought to charge online readers twice as much as for print subscriptions–searchability must be worth something. Want news? Buy a “dead tree” newspaper.

Second, copyright every article in the newspaper.

“The majority of bloggers and Internet addicts, like the endless rows of talking heads on television, do not report,” notes the invaluable Chris Hedges. “They are largely parasites who cling to traditional news outlets…They rarely pick up the phone, much less go out and find a story. Nearly all reporting–I would guess at least 80 percent–is done by newspapers and the wire services. Take that away and we have a huge black hole.” And a lot of unfulfilled demand one can charge for.

Newsgathering requires extensive infrastructure. Beat reporters, freelancers, editors, stringers, fact-checkers, and travel cost a lot of money. (A week in rural Afghanistan costs at least $10,000.) Why shouldn’t newspapers–the main newsgathering organizations in the United States–be compensated for those expenses?

Every newspaper article should enjoy an individual, aggressively enforced, copyright. Radio and TV outlets that currently lift their news reports out of newspapers–without forking over a cent–would have to hire reporters or pay papers a royalty. Paying newspapers for usage, even at a high rate, would probably be cheaper.

Step three on the road back to fiscal viability: cut off the wire services. Nowadays an article written for a local paper can get picked up by a wire service, which sells it for a ridiculously low reprint fee to other papers and websites like Google. At bare minimum, newspapers that originate stories ought to require wires to charge would-be reprinters the thousands of dollars each piece is worth. Better yet, don’t post them in the first place.

There are a couple of problems with my prescription. First, my suggestions only work if every paper follows them. Aside from the cat-herding organizational hurdles, accusations of collusion and price-fixing might bring down the wrath of government officials assigned to enforcing anti-trust laws. Second and perhaps more daunting, the “information wants to be free” mantra, once the cry of wacko libertarians, has become state religion.

“Free” doesn’t mean anything, and it obviously hasn’t worked. But it’s hard to purge a brain of a meme, no matter how moronic.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Look, an illicit affair is far from unbelievable so the concept itself of the National Enquirer having the goods on John Edwards isn’t somthing to dismiss on its face, but I’m pretty sure the Freepers having collective orgasms over this story are the same ones who were ready to pop champaigne corks upon hearing some guy claimed he had sex with Barack Obama and that Larry Sinclair had a tape of Michelle saying “Whitey.”

In other words, “we’ll release the photos later” is textbook routine for less-than-credible news outlets hoping that a story with weak evidence can pick up steam based on the scandal alone without having to actually back up their claim. I’m totally willing to be completely wrong on this, but if the Enquirer has evidence of something, release the evidence. That’s what, you know, journalists actually do.

As far as the blogger posting this goes, I really wish the logic of things like “a DNA test would have settled this weeks ago” would be more widely-understood as a sign that you’re not a real journalist. No, Edwards taking a DNA test to prove a as-yet completely unbased rumor that he has a love child is not “the solution.” See, actual journalists don’t create a story and then ask the subject of the story to verify it for you. There’s this amazing technique called “investigating” you might want to consider, and despite your fawning praise of yourself in “the most popular post on HuffPo,” that actually involves more than “lots of Googling” with the wife.

Look, an illicit affair is far from unbelievable so the concept itself of the National Enquirer having the goods on John Edwards isn’t somthing to dismiss on its face, but I’m pretty sure the Freepers having collective orgasms over this story are the same ones who were ready to pop champaigne corks upon hearing some guy claimed he had sex with Barack Obama and that Larry Sinclair had a tape of Michelle saying “Whitey.”

In other words, “we’ll release the photos later” is textbook routine for less-than-credible news outlets hoping that a story with weak evidence can pick up steam based on the scandal alone without having to actually back up their claim. I’m totally willing to be completely wrong on this, but if the Enquirer has evidence of something, release the evidence. That’s what, you know, journalists actually do.

As far as the blogger posting this goes, I really wish the logic of things like “a DNA test would have settled this weeks ago” would be more widely-understood as a sign that you’re not a real journalist. No, Edwards taking a DNA test to prove a as-yet completely unbased rumor that he has a love child is not “the solution.” See, actual journalists don’t create a story and then ask the subject of the story to verify it for you. There’s this amazing technique called “investigating” you might want to consider, and despite your fawning praise of yourself in “the most popular post on HuffPo,” that actually involves more than “lots of Googling” with the wife.

After a surprisingly quick drive-thru chat with the US Border Patrol, I spent a couple of days in the Vermont wilderness, where I happened upon the rare natural phenomenon known as the Harpoon BBQ Fest.

I like Vermont. It is the New Englandiest state in New England. For the curious, here are my rankings from most New Englandy to least: Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut (Eastern half only). These rankings are final and binding.

Now I’m back home trying to make a cartoon and catch up on everything else that makes me such a miserable asshole before I move a couple blocks down the street this weekend. If I missed an email or two, keep resending that bad boy! I’ll get back to you eventually.

Sweet, I had no idea they made a documentary about Philippe Petit. Odds are you have no idea what that name means, but the trailer covers exactly why he’s one of the ballsiest people who ever lived. There was a short PBS documentary about his story a few years back and, to be blunt, his story is amazing.

I’m not saying Petit’s particular stunt was the most daring, or that he exudes bravery that overshadows great soldiers or doctors or artists or whatever, but there’s a shortage in this world of people who spend their lives knowing exaclty what makes them happy, and just going ahead and doing it.