President of Cartoonists' Group Hits Tribune Cuts

By: E&P Staff Clay Bennett, much-honored editorial cartoonist for the Christian Science Monitor, and president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, has written a letter to
Dennis FitzSimmons, chairman, president and CEO of the Tribune Company, concerning the recent job slashings at newspapers owned by the company. One of those cuts was a cartoonist at the Los Angeles Times, who will not be replaced.

Bennett sent a copy to the Romenesko site at www.poynter.org. Here it is.
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I write you on behalf of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists concerning the impending job cuts at the Tribune Company newspapers.

An early casualty of these austerity measures was editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez, who lost his job in a round of cuts that will see some 85 positions eliminated at the Los Angeles Times. The firing of a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist was understandably met with disbelief, but that disbelief quickly turned to dismay when the Times announced it does not intend to fill the vacancy left by his dismissal.

That announcement served as an abrupt conclusion to a long and rich tradition of editorial cartooning at the LA Times. A tradition that not only helped earn the paper its world class reputation, but also earned its cartoonists five Pulitzer Prizes.

The logic of Michael's termination may be debatable, but the elimination of the editorial cartooning position is not. There are few journalists in a newsroom who can define the tone and identity of a publication like an editorial cartoonist does. By discarding those who make a newspaper unique, you rob it of its character. By robbing a newspaper of its character, you steal its spirit.

The fate of several editorial cartoonists now hangs in the balance as other newspapers within your company look to make staff cuts. We hope that further reductions can be achieved without the loss of any of the outstanding cartoonists that you currently employ. The sacrifice of even one of them would be a disservice to their readers, a detriment to their newspaper, and ultimately regrettable to the Tribune Company itself.