ISSUE

Winter 2004

Editorial Cartoons: The Impact and Issues of an Evolving Craft

Many newspapers have decided not to hire a full-time editorial cartoonist, but instead publish the readily available work of syndicated cartoonists. To explore what impact these decisions and other changing circumstances related to editorial cartoons have on journalism, Nieman Reports asked cartoonists, editorial page editors, and close observers of cartooning to write out of their experiences and share their observations about how the long-time role that cartoons have played in journalism and democracy is being affected. – Melissa Ludtke, Editor

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Articles

Opinion

Reversing the Trend Away From Journalism

Journalism will survive. It will appear in the form of Web sites designed for people checking on the news because they are trying to figure out the jokes on Jon…
Ellen Hume
December 15, 2004
Opinion

The Tasks in Creating a New Journalism

Journalism is not going to disappear. As author Michael Schudson observed, if there were not journalists, we’d have to invent them. The real issue is what journalism will look like…
Michael X. Delli Carpini
December 15, 2004
Opinion

The Messy Transition Ahead

When the dust started settling on the 2004 presidential election, journalists were doing our usual postmortems about our coverage and influence (or lack thereof) on the election. For the first…
Dan Gillmor
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Winter 2004: Words & Reflections Introduction

Can journalism survive in this era of punditry and attitude? If so, how?Nieman Reports posed this question about journalism’s future to 15 journalists who work in radio and television, at…
Melissa Ludtke
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Editorial Page Editors and Cartoonists: A Difficult Alliance

‘A cartoonist’s world is black and white, while an editor’s universe is imbued with shades of gray.’
John Zakarian
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Martha Stewart or Genocide: The Cartoonists’ Conundrum

The role of humor in editorial cartoons is being debated.
Steve Kelley
December 15, 2004
Books

Making Visible What Is Purposely Hidden

Author Mark Dow writes about what happens, but is usually unseen, in immigration prisons.
Susana Barciela
December 15, 2004
Books

The Evolving Role and Reputation of Arab Broadcasters

Shifting perceptions of reality in Iraq ‘expose the futility of our journalistic faith in the truth.’
Doug Struck
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

An Historic Look at Political Cartoons

‘The future of editorial cartooning in America is uncertain, but the past holds lessons for us all.’
Harry Katz
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Squeezing Originality Out of Editorial Cartoons

‘The resulting sameness of so much of our work has left us vulnerable.’
Ed Stein
December 15, 2004
From the Curator

A New Advisory Board for the Nieman Foundation

‘… the staff and I needed the wise counsel that a group of advisors could provide.’
Bob Giles
December 15, 2004
Nieman Notes

A Life’s Work Reconsidered

A reporter, kidnapped in Fallujah, reflects in the aftermath of that experience.
Joshua Hammer
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Drawing the Country’s Mood

‘… a drawing can pierce the emotional heart of a story deeper than the most gifted verbal lapidaries.’
Jeff Danziger
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Debunking the Explanations Given for Lost Jobs

A cartoonist offers reasons why editorial page cartoons need to survive.
Joel Pett
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Experiencing the Meaning of Journalism

Want a newspaper reprint with your barbecue sandwich? How’s that for a message near the capitol in Frankfort, Kentucky, at Scotty’s Pink Pig restaurant?I know the grim news about what…
Maria Henson
December 15, 2004
Books

Portrait of a Courageous Guatemalan Journalist

‘Though the book features events from the past, it should be read as a story that can offer us much to contemplate about our present.’
Mauricio Lloreda
December 15, 2004
Opinion

We Define Journalism By Doing It

There’s a whiff of nostalgia to this question, an implied belief that journalism in the past was noble and pure and that recent trends might ruin it. That bias faces…
Melanie Sill
December 15, 2004
Nieman Notes

What It Took to Pull Me Through

A journalist discovers what it takes to report fully on adolescents’ lives.
David L. Marcus
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

The Fixable Decline of Editorial Cartooning

Editorial page editors and business decisions combine to weaken what is the strength of editorial cartoons.
Chris Lamb
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Cartoonists Reach Out to Educators

Using a curriculum overseen by AAEC, teachers can give students “a clearer understanding of the enduring value of this daily newspaper art form.”Short of a diabolical plan to have members…
Matt Davies
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Local Cartoons Can Convey Universal Significance

Our cartoonist called Florida the place where ‘America is working out its fate.’
Mary Ann Lindley
December 15, 2004
Opinion

The Next Journalism’s Objective Reporting

Listen up, young journalists. Here’s some bad news from an old-timer: The economic basis for the detached, aloof-observer model of journalism that my generation built is crumbling fast.The good news:…
Philip Meyer
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Symptoms of Underlying Stress in Journalism

Punditry and attitude are more symptoms than causes of changes in American journalism. Think of them as signs of stress, foreshocks, as more powerful forces interact under the surface due…
John McManus
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Journalism’s Proper Bottom Line

In recent years, punditry, opinion and so-called infotainment have permeated newscasts and newspapers to such a degree that it is now difficult for the average news consumer to distill the…
Bonnie M. Anderson
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Interviewing for a Job Illuminates Some Critical Issues

‘Take a job under impossible conditions and you invariably get fired.’
Ted Rall
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

What Publishers Think About Editorial Cartoons

Unexpected benefits are found by some publishers, while others don’t even bother to ask readers about the cartoon’s impact.
Bruce Plante
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Subversive Activities

I would rephrase the question to be “Can democracy survive journalism as it has come to be practiced?” After all, accurate, trustworthy information, lots of it, is the bedrock of…
Gilbert Cranberg
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

The Evaporating Editorial Cartoonist

‘… editorial cartoon jobs are increasingly left unfilled or are eliminated entirely after a cartoonist leaves a paper.’
J.P. Trostle
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Why Political Cartoons are Losing Their Influence

‘How did it happen that such a confrontational art form … could be allowed to fall into disregard, disuse and ultimate dismissal?’
Patrick Oliphant
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Are We Witnessing the Dusk of a Cartooning Era?

What will newspapers do ‘when the last salaried cartoonist drops dead and suddenly there’s nothing to publish in that box on all these editorial pages’?
Matt Davies
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Freedom of Speech and the Editorial Cartoon

‘Cartoons are the acid test of the First Amendment.’
Doug Marlette
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Winter 2004: Editorial Cartoons Introduction

Many newspapers have decided not to hire a full-time editorial cartoonist, but instead publish the readily available work of syndicated cartoonists. To explore what impact these decisions and other changing…
Melissa Ludtke
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Journalism Mirrors the Public Mood

What if we are leaving the Age of Reason far behind? What if the basic cultural settings that have under-girded the best of American journalism—a scientific mindset and respect for…
Tom Ashbrook
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Infotainment Shrinks the News

People often ask me what it is like backstage at “The McLaughlin Group” or Chris Matthew’s “Hardball” or Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” “Do you and your fellow panelists go out…
Clarence Page
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Punditry Flowers in the Absence of Reporting

While we were getting down to the wire on the John Kerry Silver Star medal story at ABC News’s “Night-line,” the recent painful “60 Minutes’” debacle over the President’s war…
Mary Claude Foster
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Animation and the Political Cartoon

These cartoons ‘can reach inside someone’s brain and grab just the right spot.’
Mark Fiore
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Understanding the Value of the Local Connection

‘… my cartoons provide another opportunity to carry on a conversation with the people who live here.’
Scott Stantis
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Journalism Reflects Our Culture

Journalism is no more in a survival mode today than it was 52 years ago when Louis Lyons and my Nieman classmates worried about how a compliant and objective press…
Melvin Mencher
December 15, 2004
Opinion

The Inadequacy of Objectivity as a Touchstone

Certainly journalism will survive. Indeed, it could even thrive as a result of today’s very real challenges. Journalists need neither fear nor denounce the proliferation of punditry and attitude. Rather,…
Geneva Overholser
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

Where the Girls Aren’t

Why editorial cartooning is still a boy’s sport.
Signe Wilkinson
December 15, 2004
Journalist’s Trade

The Red, White and Blue Palette

What happens when cartoonists let fear and pressure soften their vigilant voices?
Ann Telnaes
December 15, 2004
Opinion

Pressures Force the Emergence of a New Journalism

Journalism often appears to thrill to the sense of being in crisis, but pressures on it now truly seem to fit the bill. On one side, it’s screwed down tighter…
Edward Wasserman
December 15, 2004