What's So Funny? Editorial Cartooning Today

In this episode, we take a look at the state of editorial cartooning in a chat with a man with more than 40 years in the business, 2-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Walt Handelsman. With a home base in New Orleans, Handelsman's cartoons are syndicated in more than 200 newspapers around the globe.

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Today, I am so thrilled. Our guest is Walt Handelsman. He's an old friend and one of the best in the business when it comes to editorial cartooning. And that's really what we want to talk to him about today. So Walt, first up, thank you for joining us.

Thank you. Good to see you.

Same here. So by way of introduction, if people aren't familiar with your name, you are a 2-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, and you are syndicated in over 200 newspapers, Not only throughout the U.S., but around the globe, correct?

Yes.

You were working for a newspaper that I believe there was a merger that happened between 2 papers?

Before I moved to Long Island in 2000, I worked at the Times-Picayune, which was the dominant newspaper, actually at the time the only newspaper in New Orleans.

Okay.

In 2012, the Times-Picayune was owned by Advance, and they decided well before many other papers did to go to 3 days a week of print, which was a big mistake. New Orleans is a town that is very interested in its own politics and its own social stuff and had a very long, important relationship with the newspaper, especially post-Katrina. And so it was a disaster. And a businessman in New Orleans decided to purchase the Baton Rouge Advocate and immediately opened up a 7-day-a-week newspaper in New Orleans, which they called the New Orleans Advocate, and began staffing it with a small skeleton crew at first, and then began getting people to come from this now 3-day-a-week newspaper that was in print, the Times-Picayune. And also, they had laid off half the staff, so he brought— The Advocate to New Orleans and as well as kept it in Baton Rouge and expanded to Lafayette. And a few years ago, I think it may be 4 or 5 years ago now, the Times-Picayune was sold to The Advocate. So 7 days a week is what people want. And now we are called the Times-Picayune and The Advocate. So it's, it's come full circle.

Got it. All right. Well, it's good news to hear.

It is, and it's been a very successful venture in a world filled with terrible stories about newspaper declining. They've done an amazing job and continue to grow because local journalism is so important, and people here really understand that, and the team has done a phenomenal job. That's been really exciting.

Why, why do you think New Orleans understands that so well?

I think there are a lot of towns this small, or this, this size, not small, but in this size market, that have a unique relationship with their readers, with the newspaper. And they don't want to lose that, you know. And my impression is that you have, you know, a little bit older readership. Those are most of the people that still read a print edition. And then we have a very active nola.com website, which deals with everything from politics to sports to society to festivals. I mean, it is New Orleans and Louisiana, so there's always something going on. But I've always felt that there was a very close, special relationship here. As a matter of fact, back in the day, the Times-Picayune and Newsday in the '90s, late '90s I guess, had, I believe, what was called the highest saturation rate of any newspapers in the country. It just so happened it was 2 newspapers that I ended up working for. But basically, when I came here in the early '90s, Everyone read the Times-Picayune, and of course everyone read Newsday. So I just think it's a unique relationship. And as I said, the paper was very important post-Katrina. It was, like it should be, a unifying factor. It was something people could rely on. I know in the very beginning it made people feel like the city was going to come back. I'm talking about very, very early on. And they did phenomenal work and won multiple Pulitzer Prizes for their work. So there's a love relationship with the newspaper. And so I think it's, it's not necessarily completely unique to New Orleans. I think there are other markets like that, but it's certainly strong here.

Now, that is all great news. So let's get into the concept of editorial cartooning, because I think depending on how old someone is, they may not even know what an editorial cartoon is if they're on the younger side. Right. Okay. And I do think there is some misconception as to what an editorial cartoon is in actuality. So maybe if you can kind of explain what it is that you do.

An editorial cartoon in simplest form is an opinion piece, a visual opinion piece. It's not supposed to be fair. It's not supposed to be a look at both sides of an issue. It's supposed to be the creator's opinion shown in visual metaphors or in punchlines. And there's a long, rich history of editorial cartooning being an important part of American and European journalism for many, many years. I mean, I guess that answers the question for younger people. When you go to a newspaper, the editorial cartoon isn't in the front section. It's not in the news section. It's on the editorial page. And so the editorial page is made up of usually an editorial from the institution, the newspaper itself, and then there will be letters to the editor. And an editorial cartoon, whether it's someone who works for the newspaper or a syndicated cartoon. And on the opposite page, the op-ed page, are columnists and sometimes other cartoons, but those are people that generally aren't— these are not editorials from the paper. These are opposite views. They may be columnists in the newspaper, but they're not the institutional voice of the paper. The editorial cartoon lives on the editorial page is the best way to put it.

Now, that was a great explanation. So take people a little bit behind the scenes. How long does it take you to actually create a cartoon?

Well, every day is different, but each day starts off with the anxiety of basically having this and turning it into a cartoon. So it really depends on the news, but I would say in general, I hit my workspace at around 8:15, I read a bunch of newspapers online. I read our paper in print and online and go to various websites and begin compiling a list of topics that I think will be good for the next day's newspaper. And then I will just sit down and try and sort of piece together, first of all, what is it that I want to say? And there may be 2 or 3 topics that I'm playing with. And then I guess every cartoonist has their own process, but the idea then is to sort of come up with an idea. You're under the gun. So, I mean, I have a 2-foot-high stack over here. These are just notes and drawings and doodles, and so I really don't know. There's no way for me to say how the process happens. I will be drawing or writing, doodling, or thinking of— visual metaphors, and all of a sudden an idea will come into my head, and it may not be the best idea, but it's getting me towards a place. Sometimes it's the best idea, but many times, most times, it's not. So then I'll work that idea for another couple of hours. I usually try and come up with 2 or 3 rough sketch— sketches to show my editor every day.

Mm-hmm.

So I'll do the rough sketches, and then, um, Because of COVID and even before COVID I was working at home here in New Orleans. I will then email the ideas to my editor, and we'll either have a quick conversation or he'll say, I like number 2. And so at that point, can take a little breath. The difficulty of running out of time is over. That usually happens around noon, and my deadline is at 5. So I'll usually grab a little something to eat, take a little breather, and then The fun part for me is drawing. I have my idea set, and I will begin refining the rough sketch, and then I generally take that rough sketch and put it on this little LED light table, which I then trace my rough sketch into a finished pen and ink drawing. Matter of fact, yesterday's— here's Yesterday's was one about Donald Trump's thumb being on the Republican Party, and so I actually took a photograph of my own thumb, and then I— these are just dependent inks— I drew several images of what my thumb looked like, trying to get what I thought would be the right frame. And then this was going to be the bottom half of the cartoon, was going to be this elephant under Donald Trump's thumb.

Nice.

And then I put the wording in, and then this, this is the cartoon as it was finished. The pen and ink drawings take anywhere from an hour to 2 hours, and then because of the technology that we have now, that's a big change over 30 years ago, everything is in color. So you can see that this is in color, and that's another additional hour to an hour and a half. It's fun, it's creative, it's artistic, but that's an added piece. And then, because I'm a cartoonist and we're terrible spellers, I will send it to the smart people at the newspaper who will proofread it. Spelling has gotten better over the years, but I don't trust— you know, you're looking at individual letters and you want to make, you want to make sure it's right. So I send it into the paper, and then once it's proofread, I size it for the paper and send it in electronically onto the actual paper itself, and then I post it online. Send a copy to my syndicate, and that whole process takes roughly the full day from 8 to about 4:30 or 5. There are days when you wake up and you're like, I have a great idea. It's rare, but it's fantastic, but it's rare. Most days at 12:30, 1 o'clock, it's quite nerve-wracking. You have to have something, and just the creative process, whether it's creating music or doing a movie or creating cartoons, there are those moments when sometimes that, that nervous energy can create better ideas, and other times it can't. It just, it's an everyday thing.

Well, you must love it if you get up and do it day after day.

I do love it. It's, it's invigorating. It's fun. It's, um, I've been doing it, this year is my 40th year, so I've done probably over, well over 10,000 cartoons. I'm, I've gotten used to the pressure. And, you know, the fun part is what really attracted me to this, to me in the beginning, which is ever-changing news events. It's never the same thing.

So how did you actually end up becoming a cartoonist? How did that happen?

Well, for me, and I know the majority of cartoonists because we used to have a yearly cartoonist convention, which was great because this is a very solitary job.

Yeah.

There's not 3 people working together. I'm by myself, whether I'm in a newsroom tucked away in an office, the door is still— whether it's open or closed, it's a solitary job. So it's really nice to get together with other cartoonists. Everyone sort of fell into this job differently. There is no quote unquote degree in cartooning. Go to college, do this, become an apprentice. Just doesn't work that way. When I started in the very early '80s, I graduated from college with a degree in advertising, and I got a job in Baltimore, where I'm from, in a small ad agency doing like artwork and paste-up and stuff like that, and I was interested in cartooning, and I visited the two— at the time, the Baltimore Sun, which was not that unusual for other big papers, literally had 2 cartoonists.

Okay.

And I called them up and said, can I come spend some time with you? And They were so nice, and this is something I found universally, it's still true, the cartoonists are very nice people there. It's not— we're competitive in the sense that we want to do the best work, but always very open, willing, and able, and liking to help younger people. And they spent the entire day with me. It was life-changing, and I promised myself that day that if I ever became a cartoonist and got any good at it, I would try and help younger people, which I spent a lot of my time doing back when people really were trying to move into this field more than they are now. I was not a good student in high school. I was probably— had ADD, don't know, was not focused and was sort of a class clown and could come up with funny lines. And but even then, I was not very disciplined in terms of like, I want to draw cartoons. And when I got into college, I did a little bit of cartooning. And it wasn't until I was really in the advertising business that I started working every night. I would come home and draw a cartoon. They were terrible, and they were, they were gigantic, but I was trying to— I said to myself, do one every day. And eventually I had enough of them to, to go to a little weekly newspaper in Baltimore, and they began running my cartoons for free. But I was so excited to get them printed. And then one thing led to another, and I got a job. at a chain of weekly newspapers. I left advertising and started drawing cartoons every day for 5 different weeklies, and that led to a job in— at the Scranton Times, which was my first daily job, and that led to me getting my job in New Orleans in 1989. So I just kind of fell into it. That's how everyone that I know that's in this business got in. It's something— they got a lucky break and they went with it. No one ever wanted to leave.

You talked about how cartoonists kind of, you hang together when you can. Has that group become smaller over time as—

Oh, it's unfortunate. When I first started, we would amass at these cartoonist conventions, and there were like 230 to 250 cartoonists. So I was young. I was in my late 20s, early 30s, and all the big cartoonists were there. Occasionally Jeff McNelly would come to a political convention, a cartoonist convention. Mike Peters would come, and there were a whole group of people in that age group, late 40s, maybe even early 50s, and they were just like heroes to us younger guys. And they were so nice, and, you know, we would have a portfolio review where they would look at the younger cartoonists' work, and of course we'd sit around and have drinks at the bar and show each other cartoons and It was a real, it was a real group of great creative people, and it was inspiring. On top of that, the syndicates would hold big parties because newspapers were making a lot of money, syndicates were making a lot of money, and they were, they would hold parties and have events and have giveaways, and then people from the public would come in to meet us. I mean, it was very different than it is now or even 10 years ago because Newspapers began shrinking with the advent of the internet and cable news, but mostly the internet. Many of them made, I think, the bad decision of— they not only cut staff, but many of them cut cartoonists because they knew that they could buy syndicated cartoons for pennies on the dollar rather than paying a cartoonist. But when you have your own cartoonist, they address local issues, which no syndicated cartoonist does. And I've always find that— found that to be a fun thing to do. You definitely connect more with your readers when you do that.

Mm-hmm.

And so, yes, over time, dozens and dozens and dozens of newspapers have shrunk and gotten rid of their cartoonists. So now, I read a thing the other day, there are like under 35 full-time daily cartoonists now, down from over 200 in my career. And there are lots of cartoonists still working through their syndicates and others that do stuff online, but there are only a handful now, 30 or so, that are still employed by a newspaper every day.

Now, you mentioned the internet. How is— is that considered competition now? I mean, if, if you took a cartoonist who 30 years ago would have become an editorial cartoonist, What does that kid grow up to do now?

That's a good question. Um, I don't consider the internet competition because my work is all over the internet. Satire is alive and well. The question is, how do you get it out to people? And then the bigger question, I guess, for individual creators is, how do you do that and make money so you can pay rent or mortgage or buy food? You need a living, you need a job. And so there are lots of creative ways that people are doing that. books, some work for websites. There's some great graphic novelists, but there's no, you know, it used to be you could, if you could break into this field and get a job at an established newspaper where they paid well and you had benefits and you had job security because, you know, people generally like your work and the readers like cartoons. And lots of my colleagues that are very, very, I mean, this is not a matter of people without talent getting booted out. These are super talented, all of them, and they're just— the papers made a decision. And, uh, as I said, many of them still make a living through their syndication, and I guess they have other creative outlets and jobs that they do. But, um, I could never have predicted this in the late '80s and all through the '90s, that this would be the way it turned out. It's just actually, it's really sad because it is such a great creative field and such a great way to, you know, poke the pompous and also relate to your readers. I do a newsletter, and I was explaining in the newsletter, I had done a cartoon about Biden, and I had done a cartoon about Trump, and I threw in a 3rd cartoon this week in the newsletter, and I said, I wanted to do a cartoon about the fact that it's like the heat index in Louisiana this week's like 110. I mean, it's unbelievably hot. And so I just did sort of a fun cartoon about someone in a 7-Eleven inside the refrigerator thing drinking water. And it's like, I find over my career that the ones that you do that relate to how everyone is feeling, whether it's Post a storm. We have a lot of hurricanes, unfortunately, here, where everyone is really tied in and related to the same thing, and the cartoonist is in his own way or her own way reflecting how we all feel. It's very gratifying to get away from the arguing about politics on a daily basis and do something that people connect with. Unfortunately, as we talked about the other day, I think that is more and more difficult because everything is, is a dividing line. Seems like everything is. you're here or you're here. And for the majority of my career, that was not how it was. Even when there were scandals with the Democrats, there were scandals with the Republicans, there always seemed to be some middle ground where everybody could agree on some point of satire or humor, either about that topic or related to that topic or on a completely other topic. I find it so— it's so difficult now to even find topics where there isn't some level of arguing or fighting, which is bad.

Yeah. Now, do you think our sensibilities as to what we find humorous have changed over the years?

Definitely. I mean, people are, you know, people say that people are more sensitive. I think people are more aware of other people's feelings, and, and that's a good thing. I just think it's the shared humor Part. Not so much that you're being edgy, or that will offend this. It's not that part. It's that there's so few things that everyone in a group can agree on. I would have thought when COVID hit that this would have been a moment where the country could rally together.

Mm-hmm.

We have great scientists. We're all inside for a month to 6 weeks in the beginning of March of 2020, March, April. And it was sort of a unifying effect in terms of the way people were living. And everybody seemed to be, you know, binging on Netflix, and everyone was having a shared experience. And that quickly morphed into like fighting, fighting over wearing masks over a period of— long period of time morphed into, you know, closing down businesses, and then it morphed into fighting over vaccines. It just, it just, it was just astounding to me because this was something that, I mean, it's a virus, let's all wear masks. That doesn't seem very difficult. And it seems smart. For a moment in time, there were 6 weeks, 2 months of cartooning about the process that we were all sharing. And then that sort of seemed to degenerate into arguing about why are we still doing it and It was just another example of the lack of unity on any level, which is tough.

How do you break through that?

Well, I think humor is a great way to reach people, and I've always tried to use more humor than not in my cartoons. I've always felt that making someone laugh with whether it's edgy or just funny and making them laugh and think or poking fun at a politician, but in a funny way rather than pounding them over the head was a better way. That was my theory, and there are lots of cartoonists that agree with that, and there are others that are considerably more serious and don't really use the, you know, the funny element as much. But I still try and do that. And I also— and I think I mentioned this to you the other day— that one of the things that I do now as an extra thing for the paper that has become very popular is this cartoon caption contest. I'm not the first person that ever did it. They do it in The New Yorker, and lots of cartoonists do this. And I actually did it when I was at Newsday once or twice, and we got— we had about 50 or 60 responses. With a much bigger readership. When I came to Louisiana, I started doing them and I was amazed. I mean, immediately it was 100 or 150. Now it's blown up to where it's not uncommon to get 700 or 800 entries. People in Louisiana have a phenomenal sense of humor and they're not afraid to share it. That's one of the attributes of the kind of characteristics of the people that live here, which is fun. So that is something that I offer. It's every other week. And it's something where— totally unrelated to politics. I, in the beginning, for a couple of years, I did do stuff that was related to politics. But as things became more and more divided, I thought to myself, I really want to just make this something people can look forward to as a reprieve from everything else. So that's one outlet that I have creatively. And that I give them creatively to share in. I don't know, I still think there are funny things in the world that we can do cartoons about, but the question is that I struggle with is, do I want to do something that's simply funny on a day when I'm reading 5 stories that are so either sad or depressing or worrisome or, you know, so it's— that's the kind of thing, the sort of internal editing that cartoonists do, like, what do I want to say for tomorrow's newspaper?

Right.

Luckily, I do 4 or 5 cartoons a week, so I have an opportunity to do lots of different things. But it's— I've always tried to balance that out. If you're going to do some powerful cartoon about Ukraine, or another horrific cartoon on the horrific mass shootings, you know, there has to be, in my opinion of cartooning, a reprieve Sometime during the week, a release valve on something that's a little, you know, here I get all these opportunities with festivals and the food, and those are shared experiences here. And also there's some just wacky stuff that happens in the Louisiana legislature that I pick on a lot. So that's kind of the way I try and balance it rather than pounding every single day, because you don't want to I don't want to pound the readers into the point where they're like, it's too much of a downer to look at these cartoons every day. I don't think that's a good approach. I think you lose people.

What about though, how do you know if you've gone too far?

Well, I have an editor for that. I don't, I don't really even send them cartoon rough sketches that I think would go too far. I mean, I guess some people would think this is too far if you do this, but It's not something that I internally feel, and I don't deliberately try and go too far. I try and make a point to express my point of view and to, if I can, show an emotional reaction to so many of these issues. I don't believe I go too far. That's not really my style. I really try and get people to relate to something and— if they can come away from the cartoon thinking about something or talking to someone else about an issue or even agreeing or disagreeing, but they thought about the issue and they hopefully respect that other people have different points of view. And you're not trying to be mean-spirited, you're trying to create a dialogue in some way.

All right.

Do you happen to have a favorite cartoon of yours?

You know, I have a few favorite cartoons that are local that are just funny, funny cartoons that I did about New Orleans. And I had, when I was on Long Island, there were, well, there were so many issues. And there was, there were a lot of funny cartoons about NIMBYism and the Long Island Railroad issues and stuff like that. So I don't have a favorite cartoon per se. I would say there are probably 10 or 15 cartoons every year when we do award entries that I have in a folder that I'm proud of, and others that I think are very powerful, and others that are just— have stood the test of time as being funny, just funny, a look at a moment in time that are funny. or biting. So no, I mean, my favorite cartoon is the one that just got approved. I can get on to drawing the cartoon, not run out of time on the deadline.

Okay, fair enough. We're actually at time now, so I'm going to leave you with one more question.

Yes.

It's kind of a standard fast chat question, and it may be the hardest question of all, which is, what's the best part about being Walt Handelsman? Oh, oh boy.

Best part about being Walt Handelsman is, um, I got— I'm married to Jodie Handelsman. She's so awesome. Professionally, it's just I've been very, very lucky.

Yeah.

It was a very difficult field to get into. Very, very, very hard in the '80s to get into this field. There were lots of jobs, but nobody was leaving. And somehow I was just consistently drawing, drawing, drawing, and a job opened up and I, and I got lucky enough to do it. And then I've had good editors and a lot of support around me. Been very, very fortunate with awards, which in the long run, they're nice, that, that's not that they don't mean as much. I've been very fortunate to hold on to jobs during difficult times.

Mm-hmm.

By sort of trying to reinvent myself and make Again, focus on the local stuff because that's really important. Being like a bad student and kind of limping into college to having this, you know, fun and exciting career is just— I'm just very, very lucky that that all happened and it's still going.

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Thank you.