We’ve never been huge fans of Steve Sack’s work, but that’s probably more to do with his medium than himself. Editorial cartooning is one of those dusty old traditions of publishing that we’re glad to see persist, without feeling terribly interested. Come to think of it, that’s true of newspapers as a whole—glad they’re around, but don’t feel we’re missing much when the subscription lapses. Still, editorial cartooning is one of the few bright spots in a trade that is otherwise in steep decline.
That explains why we were especially galled by the Pioneer-Press’s decision a couple years ago to drop Kirk Anderson. It seemed to many people to be yet another sign of end times at the dilapidated Knight-Ridder operation across town. Anderson resurfaced at the alt weekly— good for him, and good for them.
The thing about editorial cartoonists is that they seem to work harder than anyone else at the newspaper. While editors sit in business strategy meetings trying to conform the news to the interests of rich suburban readers, while the columnists sit on their thumbs two days out of every three, Sack publishes a new cartoon virtually each morning. There is no one else we can readily identify at the Strib who churns out this much work—of any quality. You might argue that there is nothing easier than expressing your opinion and getting paid to do it, but you would be wrong. The daily opinion part is itself a challenge, but attempting to be funny at the same time is about the hardest thing you can do in a seated position. Naturally, there are ups and there are downs, and the trick with succeeding in the media business is to get the average quality to the highest possible level and sustain it there for as long as you can.
For his sustained level of quality, and for his raw output alone, Sack certainly deserves the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award he just received as best editorial cartoonist in the nation—that’s a well-earned ten thousand dollar bonus, in our humble view.
The main virtue of the editorial cartoon is that it makes optimum use of its medium—in the best cases, it combines opinion, news, humor, and art in an instant visual snapshot that would not work as well in any other context, certainly not in broadcast journalism. At the same time, the editorial cartoon is the archetype for the one bright spot and growth area in the “news” business these days—the Daily Show, the Onion, the blogosphere, and all other iterations of hard news as soft entertainment turned up to eleven. This compares unfavorably with the general drift of newspapering these days, which is trying to make soft news (lifestyle magazine-type content) look and act like hard news, and also have it compete in the attention economy as entertainment—certainly a lost cause. In other words, most newspapers today (indeed, most magazines too) are trying to look and act like TV—while the true heroes such as Sack soldier on in the unglamorous backpages of a hollowed-out advertising vehicle.
Leave a Reply