True Stories of Terrible Editors | DMZ America Podcast | Ep 256

Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) take aim at a profession they know too well: newspaper and magazine editors. In an industry already bleeding staff, shrinking pages, and outsourcing judgment to lawyers, metrics, and social-media panic, the last people standing between a sharp cartoon and the reader are often the ones who sand it down, spike it, or rewrite the caption until it means nothing. Ted and Scott swap war stories from the newsroom: the editor who “doesn’t get it,” the one who is terrified of letters from subscribers, the one who treats satire like a liability memo, and the rare good one who actually fights for the work. They ask the questions cartoonists mutter after deadline: When did “edit” start meaning “neuter”? Are editors protecting the paper—or protecting themselves? How much of the crisis in political cartooning is the cartoonists, and how much is the people who approve (or kill) the drawings? And if newspapers keep hiring editors who don’t understand visual satire, why keep running cartoons at all? The DMZ America Podcast is recorded by political cartoonists Ted Rall and Scott Stantis. X: @tedrall and @scottstantis Web: rall.com