While the layoffs and buyouts at daily newspapers have slowed lately (or at least until all the 3rd Quarter revenues are tallied), editorial cartooning still took a lot of hard hits in the past 18 months. The number of editorial cartoonists whose daily newspaper jobs ended since mid-2008 numbers in the dozens – at least three dozen by most counts. In some cases, those remaining have had other duties added to their old roles or have even been reduced to part-time.

It’s hard to even know how many editorial cartoonists are left — or should I say, left in the traditional, on-staff, specialized sense of things.

When “Baby Boomers” such as myself entered the field in the 1970s and early 1980s, editorial cartooning jobs were usually that: staff positions on daily newspapers, usually doing only those cartoons in the job duties. Most big cities had at least one position, and many cities still had competing newspapers. At Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) conventions, we identified one another by city and newspaper, traded notes on job openings, and wondered about jumping from one paper to another.

What a contrast to today: Ted Rall, former president of the AAEC, counted 38 of those “traditional” positions out of a membership of about 300. My own count is around 60, and others guess it’s maybe 70 or so (there are many variables affecting the tally, such as if you count someone doing five cartoons and one Op-Ed illustration as doing full-time editorial cartooning), but in any case that’s still only a small minority of the editorial cartooning world now.

Younger editorial cartoonists often never got on a newspaper staff at all, and have little hope of doing so; they draw for web sites, alt-weeklies and such (but even alt-weeklies have slashed the spaces they once gave to freelancers). Many post-Boomers have no interest in print and have made their home online, working with color, animation and non-traditional formats. They’ll never have the full-time staff positions with benefits and the same local community impact that their older AAEC colleagues have – or used to have.

I am one of many in this profession who will go into the January journalism contest-entering season with a stark new reality: I no longer work for a daily newspaper, nor do I have tearsheets of my work in daily newspapers anymore (I haven’t since last November). Many in the AAEC never did at all, drawing for web sites or alt-weeklies or niche publications or self-syndication or multiple places, and often struggle to get tearsheets at all.

However, many of the contests involving editorial cartoonists are still oriented toward material produced only for a daily newspaper. The percentage of editorial cartoonists NOT with a daily newspaper now is a substantial, and clearly growing, number, particularly for the younger practitioners.

Hopefully, the AAEC will attempt to make the various journalism competitions aware that ever-fewer cartoonists qualify for “daily” requirements, and perhaps urge these competitions to consider material from non-daily and/or online sources so that the competition is not just made up of a shrinking pool of daily staffers.

Another point: with so many layoffs, newspaper expense cutbacks and those-never-on-a-newspaper, contest entry fees likewise may disenfranchise an ever-growing percentage of cartoonists. Many are $50, and going up as high as $150, and are often a form of fund-raising for the sponsoring organizations. I paid my own way this past January, and could not enter several competitions due to costs.

The old employment model is a minority. Freelancers and multi-taskers are the new majority. Some journalism organizations have learned this — and have realized that much of journalism is now online only — while others have yet to make changes to reflect life in 2009.

Otherwise, the nominations are going to look a lot like, “Luckovich, Ramirez, Toles, Luckovich, Ramirez and Toles” every time. They are fine talents… but most of editorial cartooning doesn’t look like their jobs anymore.

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Be sure to see the huge archive of my work (organized by topic area) on my web site at http://www.greenberg-art.com