NEW YORK – Even during a year of sobering economic news for media companies, the layoffs of three Pulitzer Prizewinning editorial cartoonists on a single day hit like a gut punch.

The firings of the cartoonists employed by the McClatchy newspaper chain last week were a stark reminder of how an influential art form is dying, part of a general trend away from opinion content in the struggling print industry.

Losing their jobs were Jack Ohman of California’s Sacramento Bee, also president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists; Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky; and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. Ohman and Siers were full-time staffers, while Pett worked on a free-lance contract. The firings on Tuesday were first reported by The Daily Cartoonist blog.

“I had no warning at all,” Ohman told The Associated Press. “I was stupefied.”

McClatchy, which owns 30 U.S. newspapers, said it would no longer publish editorial cartoons. “We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the chain said in a statement.

Editorial cartoonists’ firings point to steady decline of opinion pages in newspapers | AP News

I did a quick check on their work and unsurprisingly, the three are rabid Liberals who right now have to be pissed off about doing their master’ work and still being canned?

How come McClatchy did not fire Conservative cartoonists? Probably because they don’t have any.