Monday December 12, 2005 is Black Ink Monday

Posted on December 5, 2005

Editor and Publisher reports that Monday, December 12th is Black Ink Monday in which editorial cartoonists are joining together to protest the number of editorial job losses in the newspaper industry. On that day the cartoonists will all draw cartoons on the same subject.

Comic cartoonists have cooperated to do "theme days" on rare occasions. But this may be a first for editorial cartoonists, said J.P. Trostle, news editor of Editorial Cartoonists.com -- the Web site of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

The site will publish the Dec. 12 cartoons criticizing the job losses. The AAEC also hopes newspapers will publish the cartoons and syndicates will distribute them. Trostle told E&P that he does not yet know how many cartoonists will participate. The AAEC has more than 300 members, with perhaps a third of them affiliated with daily newspapers and/or major syndicates.

He added that some cartoonists may do a protest cartoon just for the AAEC site (the drawings are due Friday) and then create their usual cartoon for Dec. 12. Others may make their one and only Dec. 12 cartoon the protest one. Trostle said it remains to be seen if any newspapers will balk at running these protest drawings.

Among the reasons for the protest: "The Tribune Co.'s attitude has just flummoxed us," said Trostle, referring to all the cartoonist jobs lost or unfilled at that chain's newspapers.

Hey, we like editorial cartoons. On December 12th, we'll be heading over to EditorialCartoonists.com. Of course, most editorial cartoons are political in nature. Maybe someone is finding a way to silence those annoying editorial cartoonists? Naw, that's just a crazy conspiracy theory. Right?

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