Future of Comics #8,395

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has printed its last issue and will go online from this point forward. It doesn't exactly look like a glorious interweb future for the paper either. Most of the staff has been laid off and the paper will now be "mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting." Seattlepi.com: your portal to links to other news sites!

I'm always concerned about where editorial cartooning fits into these things. They usually don't. The P-I has two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Horsey on staff and he will retain his job. That's the good news. But apparently Horsey is directly employed by the Hearst Corporation, the P-I's owner, and his cartoons will now be used in their 16 papers.

So while I'm happy to see a cartoonist whose work I like continue, an internet staffer he will not necessarily be. And that's what I've been watching and waiting for. In the transition--or collapse--into internet publishing, cartoons are not part of the equation and the revenues generated from a website seem to make a staff position a pipe dream.

You only need to look at this list Cagle posted of recently laid off, bought out and retired cartoonists to see where we are headed. The list of internet staff cartoonists is quite different. There isn't a single one.

I've been trying to avoid posting gloomy news about editorial cartoons, but it's hard.