The past week has seen one big win for editorial cartooning jobs, and one big loss.

The big win was Drew Litton, who is the rarest of breeds, a sports editorial cartoonist. His job abruptly came to a halt when his newspaper, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, shut down, throwing him (and his coworker Ed Stein) out of work after 26 years there.

But the Chicago Tribune has just hired him to do a weekly, large color editorial cartoon on area sports teams. The feature, called “The Main Event,” debuted on Oct. 31st and featured the Cubs. You can see his first effort at http://www.drewlitton.com/ (just scroll down a bit and look for the large word “Smack” on the Tribune page).

Just months ago, the Tribune had been the object of anger in the editorial cartooning world for having left their staff editorial cartoonist position vacant for nearly a decade following the death of Jeff MacNelly. But they hired Scott Stantis away from Birmingham — the best editorial cartooning news in a largely bad year — and now with taking on Litton’s work the Tribune has suddenly become the stellar example of support for the field of editorial cartooning… which is something they used to be, employing as many as three staff editoonists at a time.

In a great sports town, Litton should have plenty of material to work from… perhaps enough to convince the Trib to increase their use of him beyond one day a week.

But the week’s bad news: Dwane Powell is calling it quits at the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, after 35 years there.

Sure, he’s 65, but this was not a standard retirement scenario. Powell had been coldly and abruptly demoted to part-time status at the N&O last year despite his enormous local popularity and impact. His folksy, yet wild-and-crazy cartoons and drawing style were a hit with Raleigh readers and with his professional colleagues, who considered him a cartoonists’ cartoonist.

The News & Observer had tried to keep the cut quiet, hoping readers wouldn’t notice a big drop-off in the cartoons, but word leaked out and a “shit storm” ensued, according to Powell. The paper realized it had likely made a mistake, but Powell decided, at age 64, to accept the three-times-a-week situation (and 40 percent pay cut) as a means of easing toward retirement with full benefits.

The editorial page editor of the N&O has said there were no immediate plans to replace Powell (who may or may not contribute occasionally back to the paper), so this most likely means another staff position is permanently lost. Since Drew Litton’s new situation is a weekly freelance gig, that’s one more net loss for the severely shrinking world of newspaper editorial cartooning staff jobs.

In 1981 there were eight editorial cartoonists working in North Carolina. With Powell gone that leaves just one, Kevin Siers at the Charlotte Observer.

North Carolina, with crazy characters to work with such as Jesse Helms, had been a cartooning playground. Now the lampooning is down to one cartoonist; Powell is considering remaining with Creators Syndicate, but that would preclude his doing local cartoons.

Drew and Dwane are friends of mine and great talents that took some tough hits over the past year. My best wishes to them both as their new paths take shape.

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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