Speaking Truth to Power

OK, so speaking truth to power is part of my job description as an editorial cartoonist. It ain't always fun (sometimes it is). Here's an open letter to Mr. Pluck and whoever else calls the shots on these blogs:

This new blog is a total letdown. We were told "this blog isn't changing, but it will have a lot of new improvements," and we were asked to tell this to our readers. BorgBlog's readers are responding with one giant, monolithic voice, "Who do you think you're fooling?"

The new Pluck blog is anything but an improvement in the case of BorgBlog. My readers used to be able to come to my blog and find an aesthetically pleasing column of drawings and essays, easy to navigate and post comments on, and enlarge the images with a single click for the many who chose to visit to scratch their graphic itch. Now it is a column of post titles, clicking over and back, over and back, over and back to miserly image files. What a disappointment.

There's no shortage of blame, some of which goes to Blogger, whose attention was increasingly difficult to capture when posting. A bigger share goes to the jerks whose inappropriate comments made it necessary to seek a more accountable format. I can hardly blame corporate for seeking a better system to police those whose fundamental incivility constantly threatened to sink the old blogs, as well as my faith in humanity.

Maybe Pluck is working well for those writers whose style fits it naturally. And Lord knows, I don't miss moderating comments. But for a graphics-oriented blog like this one, Pluck is no improvement. BorgBlog readers and I are all losing interest fast.

A Movable Blog

This blog has moved! The new blog can be found at
http://news.cincinnati.com/borgblog, so be sure to update your bookmarks.

If you subscribe to this blog via an RSS reader, the new RSS feed is
http://sitelife.cincinnati.com/ver1.0/PersonaBlog/BlogRss?plckBlogId=Blog:e1
b6bfc0d9a24509a05e442a57e55e40

Blogged Down

Blogger must be one busy little site, because once again I've been unable to upload my cartoons for a couple of days. Sorry for the delay.

Kentucky Primary

Public Service Announcement

So here's the scoop on the switch over to Pluck, in the words of our Enquirer guru of blogs Mandy Jenkins.

"Starting later this week, this blog will be published in a new blog tool
on a brand-new Cincinnati.Com website.

- This blog isn’t changing, but it will have a lot of new improvements.

- When we move to the new blog, this one won’t go away just yet, but it will
have a link to the home of the new blog. Eventually, any bookmarks and links
to this blog will take you to the new one.

- Once I start posting to the new blog, you’ll be able to get in and get a
sneak peek at the new website before anyone else."

I'm not entirely sure about the "this blog isn’t changing, but it will have a lot of new improvements" part. The Pluck blogs I've seen require the reader to click on each blog post in order to see the cartoon, and I'm not sure that's an improvement for a graphics blog, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. Generally, Pluck blogs are spoken of highly among those who've adopted them.

I do look forward to moving to the new post-moderation era, in which readers will apparently be able to shoot tranquilizer darts into the necks of inappropriate commenters. That should make for livelier repartee, don't you think?

The World According to Bush

Thanks For Your Patience

Blogger finally ended its Borgman boycott and here's the work from the last several days.

The bubble in the cartoon about frat boy Marc Dann originally read "'Bout Time" as he was being dragged away, but Dann held on another day and at the last minute I changed the caption to something a bit more equivocal. Late-breaking humor, don't you know.

Hillary's Rust Belt is a rare case of one of my cartoons that might have benefitted from color, but it ran on a Thursday. I tried to make the belt look rusty using tones and body english, but it was really her caricature that I enjoyed.

"Oh, the ...places you'll go!" earns a big thanks to my buddy Jerry Scott who talked me down from the ledge as deadline approached and got me brainstorming aloud long enough to trip across an idea despite myself. Jerry does that for me more than anyone will ever know. A tip of the Hatlo hat, old pal!