panel of toons

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This past Tuesday my buddy and fellow cartoonist Joel Pett was in town and asked me at the last minute to speak on a panel of cartoonists at the fancy–smansy Marriott in Times Square. The elevators and the suicide railings alone made me dizzy. The rock star panel was built of Ted Rall, Joel Pett, Jeff Danziger, Matt Davies and Mikhaela Reid. What an honor this was. I was sitting on a panel with two Pulitzer Prize winners and two other cartoonists who where named “100 People Who Are Screwing Up America” by Bernard Goldberg. Shit. It was very, very inspiring.
My part in the conversation focused on the younger breed of editorial cartoonists. The second shift cartoonists. The breed who’ve realized early on that editorial cartooning rarely pays the bills.

The audience was filled with college journalism advisors full of questions about the profession. The problem with journalism at the college levels is that editorial cartooning is not taught or recognized as much as it should be. Future editors, writers and photographers graduate without an understanding of the importance of an editorial cartoonist. The consequence is an industry with safe gag style editorial cartoons or none at all.

There was good news. The college advisors were listening. Hopefully we promoted some change they can believe in (sorry, Barak… I said it first).