Medill Reports: Turning the page on political cartoons

Medill Reports: Turning the page on political cartoons: "“Newspapers are getting rid of cartoonists at an alarming rate. They’re trying to make themselves as irrelevant to readers as possible,” said Milt Priggee, former cartoonist for Crain’s Chicago Business. “The first thing a human being recognizes is visuals. Children can recognize images before they can read the written word. The very first person you should be hiring when you start a newspaper is a cartoonist.”

According to Kent Worcester in a 2007 article by the American Political Science Association, “the waning of two-newspaper cities, the consolidation of the newspaper industry, and outsourcing in the form of substituting syndicated material for staff-generated material” are all to blame.

The result has been a drastic cut in staff cartoonist jobs, from 2,000 in the early 20th century, to nearly 200 in the 1980’s, to less than 90 today."