Drawing down: Why US cartoonists are being forced to play it safe

Ted Rall was fired from his job as the editorial cartoonist at The Los Angeles Times this summer over a blogpost critical of the LA police. The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists is calling for an independent investigation of the facts and the dismissal–

Former LA Times contributor Ted Rall on why US cartoonists are being forced to play it safe to keep their shrinking pay cheques

CARTOONISTS IN THE US – and, indeed, in many parts of the world – are under pressure to conform to what are increasingly ossified, corporate and slavish media demands.

Cartooning goes back to ancient wall graffiti, but professional cartoonists are subject to the whims of the capitalist system: you have to get paid something to live and breathe current events, politics and culture enough to be able to draw decent cartoons day after day, year after year. As long as I’ve been in the game, since the late 1980s, it’s been a buyer’s market. Cartoonists are plentiful, outlets are scarce, so cartoonist salaries (what salaries? no one gets hired full-time anymore), or rather rates, keep dropping. In 1990, I could have gotten $1000 or more per cartoon from a paper like The Los Angeles Times. In 2009, I started at $400. A couple of years later, it was $200.

In a buyer’s market, vendors do what they’re told. They jump through hoops. They accept censorship. They self-censor. They don’t dare to stretch, much less take political or even aesthetic risks. You’re lucky to have a gig, they tell you – and they’re right.

So cartoons get blander and safer. Which creates a not-so-delicious irony: as the media gets more boring, it loses readers. Which means less money for cartoons. And more pressure on cartoonists to play it safe.