Rob Rogers’ firing is a frightening omen

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Nick Anderson reflects on the recent firing of former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff cartoonist Rob Rogers.

Getting a string of cartoons killed is generally not a good harbinger of things to come, and going public with it is a risky gambit. But, there is absolutely no reason to be an editorial cartoonist if you don’t have the opportunity to express yourself. That’s the whole point of being a cartoonist. His situation was clearly growing intolerable. He was right to go public…. Newspapers get tired of the controversy that a full-time cartoonist can cause. A staff cartoonist is someone who works as a salaried employee, much like a reporter. A syndicated cartoon is distributed to hundreds of papers by a news service. Editors get tired of the complaints from readers. But those firings could easily have been masked as layoffs, especially since syndicated cartoons are far less expensive. —CNN