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WASHINGTON --  George W. Bush as a monkey.  Richard Nixon’s Dumbo ears.  An elephant and a donkey, engaged in verbal sparring. 

They’re images we’ve grown accustomed to in political cartoons, and they can be found in nearly every major newspaper and magazine in the country. 

Their place in the American political conversation dates back more than 250 years, and they have powerfully shaped how readers view the issues.  But, as newspaper readership declines, staff positions have been slashed and put the political cartoonist in jeopardy. 

“Newspapers are getting rid of cartoonists at an alarming rate.  They’re trying to make themselves as irrelevant to readers as possible,” said Milt Priggee, former cartoonist for Crain’s Chicago Business.  “The first thing a human being recognizes is visuals.  Children can recognize images before they can read the written word.  The very first person you should be hiring when you start a newspaper is a cartoonist.”

According to Kent Worcester in a 2007 article by the American Political Science Association, “the waning of two-newspaper cities, the consolidation of the newspaper industry, and outsourcing in the form of substituting syndicated material for staff-generated material” are all to blame.

The result has been a drastic cut in staff cartoonist jobs, from 2,000 in the early 20th century, to nearly 200 in the 1980’s, to less than 90 today.

The very nature of the editorial cartoon is to incite reaction, which can go against the modern media conglomerate business model of avoiding the controversial in an effort to appeal to larger audiences. 

“The owners of newspapers have changed our job description,” said Priggee, whose work has appeared in Newsweek, the Washington Post and the New York Times. “Before, the rule was to editorialize and provoke.  Now it’s to address and entertain.  Don’t take a position, don’t editorialize, don’t create any grief.”

Ted Rall, an editorial cartoonist whose work appears in more than 140 U.S. newspapers, has witnessed a “continuing trend away from editorial cartoons to illustrations of the news.”

“These are cartoons that kind of don’t tell you anything you didn’t already know,” said Rall.

Nick Anderson is a staff cartoonist for the Houston Chronicle and the 2005 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

“Occasionally I will indulge in something funny, and its fine to keep readers engaged with something lighthearted,” said Anderson.  But “the operative word in editorial cartoons is editorial.” 

“What you see printed in national editions is definitely watered down and safe,” said Anderson.  “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of good, pointed commentary going on.”

The internet has become a new canvas for political cartoonists, who often post their work on their own web sites and through online media organizations.  And while newspaper readership may be down, readership of online political cartoons can be limitless.

“The editorial cartoon of today is seen literally all over the world, whereas 50 years ago the only people who would have seen it would have been in newspaper circulation areas,” said Priggee.

The rise of technology and the internet has also changed the cartoons themselves.  The image of the political cartoon as a single black and white image with dialogue has given way to multi-panel images, vivid color, and the animated cartoon that includes audio and can run several minutes.

“One of the big changes is the rise of alternative cartooning,” said Rall, who has embraced the multi-panel format because of the increased space.  “It’s kind of allowed people to set up arguments because they’re wordier.” 

Rall and many modern political cartoonists have also moved away from the use of symbolism in their work, something that marked nearly all historical editorial cartoons.  Typical images included the use of the donkey and the elephant to represent political parties. 

“No more labels, no metaphors, no cheesy Uncle Sam’s crying.  It’s dumb!” said Rall.  “That imagery isn’t popular with readers.  They don’t get it, they don’t relate to it.”

 While technology provides cartoonists a new way to distribute their work,  it also allows legions of new political satirists to reach American homes.

“The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, there are so many other forms of effective satire other than newspapers,” said Anderson, who holds one of the few remaining staff newspaper positions in the country.  “We’re just following newspapers in a reduction in influence.”

According to Anderson, “the days of doing one black and white cartoon a day are numbered.  You have to kind of think outside the box and try to do things differently than you have in the past.”

Mark Fiore is one of a handful of cartoonists who has left print behind for the web.  A print cartoonist for a decade, he moved into full-time political cartoon online animation for greater creative freedom.

“I feel like I can get away with explaining a lot more and touch on issues that are more in depth and in detail and explain them more to a reader,” said Fiore.  “In print you’re a lot more constrained…The benefit of the web is that you can take one cartoon and expose it to so many more people.”

It is a new frontier for the political cartoonist outside the formerly safe confines of the newspaper page.  “This is a scary time but also an invigorating time.  We’re under threat, and yet the opportunities are kind of limitless for what we do,” said Anderson.

“There’s so much doom and gloom in the industry,” said Fiore.  “A lot of it is reasonable.  But there’s so much potential out there.  The art is shifting, but if you really love it, you’re going to make it work.”