On Topic: The business of opinions

When Bob Evans died in 2007, his corporate hometown newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, published an editorial cartoon that showed the restaurant-chain boss, wearing his trademark cowboy hat, standing anxiously at the Pearly Gates.

St. Peter, consulting a long list, glances over and says, “That'll be a 45-minute wait.”

Outsiders might have found the depiction by then-staff editorial cartoonist Jeff Stahler mean-spirited. The guy had just died, for goodness sake.

But local readers thought it was hysterically funny. Evans and the business he'd started, after all, were sources of grass-roots pride - like the Buckeyes and Dave Thomas - so they could see the rueful humor along with testimony.

That's the thing about a good, locally generated editorial cartoon. It can offer a smart, visual comment on a local event close to the hearts and minds of readers - the passing of a luminary, a business development, a sports team controversy, a school board snafu - that a faraway cartoonist whose work is provided by a national syndicated service would never know or understand.

(Full disclosure: For a number of years, I did the editorial cartoons for a business newspaper in Michigan. Believe me, it's hard work to be topical and clever - and about business.

(My favorite was after a state official advised drivers not to worry about hitting deer on country roads. I drew a cartoon the next week showing a TV anchor saying, “And now for an opposing view ...,” and sitting next to her, in suit jacket and necktie, was a large, very annoyed deer. Ha.)

As Brian Duffy noted when we spoke by telephone a few weeks ago, an editorial cartoonist is essentially “an opinion writer using lines instead of words.” Duffy conceived and drew the front-page editorial cartoon for the Des Moines Register for more than 16 years.

He started as an editorial cartoonist in the 1980s, the “golden age” of family newspapers, he recalled. He was 28 when he first went to work for the Register, the youngest person in the newsroom.

But even in those early days his chosen field was narrowing. Then it got even narrower.

What happened to Brian Duffy is what came to pass for lots of folk in print journalism. As profits declined, many newspapers did what plenty of other businesses tried - they attempted to cut their way to profitability, and began reducing staff.

That included editorial cartoonists.

At the turn of the 20th century, some 2,000 editorial cartoonists held staff positions on daily newspapers in this country, Duffy said. But at last tally, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists estimated only 45 editorial cartoonists are still employed at papers today.

I get it. Anyone trying to run any sort of company can see the reasoning.

Circumstances can require painful choices, and that can include staffing. What do we keep doing and, just as important, what do we stop doing?

But as Duffy noted, that daily visual viewpoint can foster a strong bond between the reader and the cartoonist - and, by extension, the paper. Its loss can cause a significant break in the link between a newspaper and its community - at a time when the medium needs all the local connection it can get.

Don't cry for Duffy, though. He's phenomenally busy: Among other illustration chores, he creates cartoons for King Features Syndicate and his own statewide service that gets his work published from Dubuque to Sioux City.

And he does “quite a bit of reading” to stay on top of the news, he said, waking up every day at 4 a.m.

Having said that, he's not optimistic about his profession. Duffy believes he is likely among the “last generation to be able to make a ‘living' (his quotes) being an editorial cartoonist.”

He might be right. If he is, it'll be a lost opportunity at community building.