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February 26, 2005
John Cole Canned -- Another Staff Cartoonist Position Unceremoniously Axed
On January 7, editorial cartoonist John Cole became the latest of many staffers fired at The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C., by the newspaper’s new owner, Paxton Media Group.
Sources told E&P Online that Cole was let go despite winning this year’s John Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition – and even though his wife is soon due with their second child.
Kentucky-based Paxton Media Group purchased the Durham daily toward the end of 2004 from the family that had owned it for over a century. Within 30 minutes of the transfer of legal ownership on January 3, Paxton fired over 80 executives and employees at The Herald-Sun – nearly a quarter of the 350-person staff.
Shortly after being canned, Cole posted a few thoughts on the AAEC-L: "No tears here ... The last few days at the Herald have been like an episode of "The Twilight Zone"; I half-expected Rod Serling to pop up from a newsroom cubicle and set the stage. I’m also sort of surprised it took so long for them to eliminate my post; given the way they treated the long-serving suits (along with a much-loved local columnist) from day one, it was logical to assume the cartooning slot would represent a very attractive target.
"My severance will carry us through the next few months, giving us time to devote to the arrival next week of our son [see right] and set a game plan on what to do next. ... Hopefully, we’ll find some way to keep my cartoons going in a gainful sense."
The Herald-Sun, with a daily circulation of 50,000, was one of the smallest newspapers in the country to maintain a full-time staff editorial cartoonist.
While J.P. Trostle continues to do a weekly cartoon for sister publication The Chapel Hill Herald, Paxton Media has made it clear they have completely eliminated the Herald-Sun slot.
In an interview on The State of Things, a weekday talk show on local NPR station WUNC, the newly installed editor from Paxton Media, Bob Ashley, said it was not "practical" for a paper this size to have a full-time cartoonist: "As we faced the decisions we were making, that is not a position – given what our reality was – we though we could sustain."
Dave Astor contributed to this article.
But the Good News is ...
John and Kate Cole announce their newest recruit, John Woodson Cole, who joined the team early January 14, 2005, 41 minutes too late to share his old man’s birthday. Measuring 19.5 inches and weighing in at seven pounds even, he goes by "Woodson." His dad, however, has been known to call him "Dubya" if only for the amusement of watching his liberal relatives squirm. His big sister Caroline has been a tremendous helper and thinks he’s pretty cool.