Vanishing ink: Cartoonists fade…

You might want to have a look at the political cartoon on the adjoining page. Its creator, Dwane Powell, is part of an endangered species.

Increasingly, political cartoonists are the spotted owls of the American newspaper landscape. Over the last 20 years the number of newspaper cartoonists has dropped from more than 200 to fewer than 90.

Their numbers seem to dwindle daily. Last week, prize-winning cartoonist Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher was one of 70 Baltimore Sun staffers to accept a management buyout offer. The Sun, a Tribune Co. paper, said he will not be …

The two Washington Posts…

As far as most readers are concerned, washingtonpost.com is The Washington Post. But it’s not, really. They are quite different, though the content is much the same and the Web site delivers Post content 24 hours a day.

The Post is primarily a local newspaper, no matter how or where it’s read. Its circulation, as reported in September, is 671,322 daily and 965,920 Sunday. The Web site’s reach is huge — 8 million unique visitors a month, about 1.3 million of them local.

While local readers use washingtonpost.com more often and more intensely, the site …

I came, I saw, I came back…

The big Brazilian newspapers have similar priorities, with a few differences due to editorial projects or geographic location, but in general their coverage is pretty much the same. One way of understanding the priorities is to follow how they use their space, the visibility they give and the resources that a newspaper spends on coverage.

These observations occurred to me in connection with coverage of the presidential election in Venezuela. The neighboring country and its president, Hugo Chvez, have been an obligatory topic for Brazilian newspapers for a long time. Chvez is generally …

Open door…

A reader writes: “Yet another religious article today. Please could you tell me why there is now so much religion in the Guardian? What prompted this move to go from being a secular paper to the most religious of all the papers?”

This took me somewhat by surprise. I am more used to letters that complain that fringe references to religious matters in the Guardian, away from its main coverage, are too often made in a tone of disparagement if not actual contempt.

In a second email the reader elaborated: “I was brought up in a …

Why not take ”man” out of titles?…

The request from a Bristol reader seemed fair enough, especially in this day and age.

“I would like to see The Courant move toward gender-neutral titles in all articles,” Mary Rydingsward wrote in an e-mail last month. Her point being that “language sends an important message that is not only immediately received by the reader, but also resonates in the reader’s subconscious.”

Rydingsward suggested referring to town council representatives as “councilors.” She noted that “other local newspapers have taken this path to eliminate gender bias.” It would be a small change, she said, that would …

The end of Sinapse…

On Tuesday, the monthly supplement Sinapse, which was created by Folha in July 2002 with the idea of “dealing with various dimensions of knowledge” and “to orient readers to build a cultural repertoire that will help with personal and professional life,” stopped circulating.

It was not a section dedicated exclusively to education, but this ended up being the main focus of the 41 editions in its short history.

When Sinapse was launched, its first story was about university diplomas (“More than a diploma, it is necessary to be educated”). In his presentation, then-editor …

A little about me, a lot about ”breaking the silence”…

Greetings, and welcome to my maiden voyage as the first ombudsman in the 36-year history of the Public Broadcasting Service. To find out more about me and my mission you can click on two links: biography, and mission & approach. But basically I’m here to serve viewers, online visitors, and PBS by listening to comments, complaints and compliments from viewers, sorting out those that go to the journalistic mission of PBS, getting reactions and explanations from PBS producers and officials, and providing independent assessments, when necessary, about whether PBS programs measured up to their own editorial …

Invisible Indians…

Out of sight, out of mind.

Such is the conclusion about Native Americans that’s likely in this part of the country as the Star-Telegram draws the curtain on our 2005 observance of American Indian Heritage Month.

That’s just about it for Indian news, which usually floats in obscurity even though there’s abundant justification at the national level for at least the scrutiny of watchdog coverage — one of the greatest resources that an American minority can depend upon to expose abuses at the hands of the powers that be.

For instance, the federal Bureau …

The hidden source …

Over the past two weeks the country has experienced the consequences of a clash between two top-level government officials, Antonio Palocci (finance minister) and Dilma Rousseff (presidential chief of staff) concerning the direction of the economy. The differences in thinking, while normal in any administration, took on airs of an uncontrollable crisis due to the fragile condition of the administration of President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva and his ministers amid accusations of corruption.

The new chapter in the government crisis began with an interview with Rousseff in the daily newspaper “O Estado …

Illuminating local lives in each day’s obits…

Most of the recent news about newspapers has had little to do with journalism.

Business sections have described investor dissatisfaction with media company profits and reported on layoffs or buyouts in newsrooms across the country. Industry Web sites are dominated by stories about declining circulation and a fragmented media marketplace.

In this environment it is easy to overlook examples of continuing excellent journalism, not the big, prize-winning series but the daily stories that are often taken for granted.

An article published in The Sun’s Nov. 17 edition, “Thomas Cunningham, 71, longtime egg delivery man,” was …