Rob Rogers has been working as the editorial cartoonist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the past 25 years. On Thursday, he was fired.
A little less than two weeks ago, the The Inquirer ran a story about how the Post-Gazette had been shutting down Rogers’ cartoons since March, when Keith Burris took over as editorial director in a merger with the Toledo Blade.
It is unusual for a staff cartoonist to have an entire week’s worth of political cartoons spiked. Signe Wilkinson, the Inquirer and Daily News’ Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, said she has had just one cartoon killed in her tenure — a drawing that was spiked from the Inquirer but ran in the Daily News.
Rogers’ cartoons were replaced in print by the work of syndicated artists and three cartoons by Toledo Blade staff cartoonist Kirk Walters. In last Tuesday’s paper, under a cartoon about gun control by syndicated cartoonist Robert Ariail, Rogers was listed as having “the day off.”
What was wrong with Roberts’ cartoons? He posted them to his Twitter account. Maybe we can find a pattern?
Check out more of his work below.
It must be stated that this was not a turn in the editorial direction of Rogers’ political cartoons. He has always been highly critical of the obvious bullshit going on. The past two years leading up to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette merging with the Toledo Blade’s editorial staff have seen the newspaper turn more and more Trumpservative. The merger in March was the final move in turning the newspaper into a propaganda rag for the Trump administration.
The Toldeo Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are owned by John Robinson Block. You might remember how Block, who sits atop the editorial board of the Post-Gazette, embarrassed himself and his staff by signing off on the most racist editorial statement posted during Martin Luther King Jr. Day that argued we shouldn’t call Trump or his immigration policies racist. Block has been an open Trump supporter since Trump won the Republican primary and clearly, that “support” flies in the face of the freedom of the press to speak truth to power—even when it’s done with pictures.
Share your favorite Rob Rogers piece in the comments!
