Is this the end of the political cartoonist?, by Rocco Fazzari - 24th May 2016

Your text advertisement here from as little as $100USD per 12 months

Profiles

Politics Cartoons Comics Art Entertainment

Advertising Promotions

The artists and illustrators of Australian media have weathered the disruption of digital technology … until now. As dozens of journalists depart Fairfax, veteran cartoonist Rocco Fazzari reflects on what's at stake.

My passion for newspaper art began as a 13-year-old newspaper boy selling the Adelaide News on a street corner. I spent more time sitting on a pile of newspapers, marvelling at the illustrations papers back then featured, than spruiking my wares.

I admired the beautiful pen work of Ripley's Believe it or Not, which was always buried somewhere near the sports pages.

I laughed at and admired the simplicity of the line work of legendary Australian political cartoonist Norm Mitchell.

Occasionally, one of my sporting heroes would be featured in a masterfully rendered charcoal drawing that would literally take my breath away.

These artists were my heroes and I so much wanted to be like them.

My first paid illustrations, while still at art school, were of pen and ink drawings of houses for the real estate section — at the time, all the images of houses "for sale" were drawings.

In my time in the profession, 28 years at The Sydney Morning Herald and two at the Canberra Times, I have witnessed at close range the disruption of picas to pixels and, along with the demise of the newspaper, that of the noble profession of cartooning/illustrating to its current tenuous position.

It seems cost-cutting in the modern newsroom has made the cartoonist an easy target, with Fairfax Media recently making redundant dozens of experienced journalists, myself included.

More are sadly bound to follow, as clickbait fever runs amok and digital metrics fail to register the beauty of a quirky piece of line work or the cleverness of a metaphor.

We are a slow-moving target in the crosshairs of management.

Fairfax was the great stable of cartoonists and illustrators; it was the place to work if you aspired to greatness, which is perhaps why my redundancy feels particularly cruel.

Tony Abbott: the greatest gift to a cartoonist

On my journey I have enjoyed drawing Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Rudd again and the greatest gift to the cartoonist: Tony Abbott.

The combination of slapstick and goofiness coupled with a caricaturable face always gave cartoonists ample opportunity for mocking and parody.

But what took Abbott to the next level as a cartoonist's treasure were his three-word slogans.

Years of collaboration with economics columnist Ross Gittins fine-tuned my ability to turn abstract concepts into simple, strong images. The challenge of developing Ross's 'Happiness Index' concept was about as hard as it gets, but a big reward when the man himself sought me out to tell me it was a cracker.

*click here for full article