I’m working on a short item for this week’s ink-on-paper Stranger about the recent round of job cuts at the Seattle TImes, but this seems notable and worth getting out there now:
Eric Devericks, 32, the newspaper’s only editorial cartoonist, has been let go.
He is one of 31 people departing the Times newsroom (19 voluntarily, and 12 involuntarily) as part of the paper’s current “workforce reduction,” its third this year.
“I wasn’t shocked,” Devericks told me by phone earlier today. “I almost got laid off in May.”
His last day will be Dec. 12. Because he’s been at the paper six years, he’ll receive an extra six weeks of pay. He doesn’t know what he’ll do next.
“It’s not pleasant news,” Devericks said. “I think the editorial pages will be worse off without a cartoonist. But you would expect me to say that.”
I thought the Times was eliminating its editorial page anyway…?
It really is down to a page or so at this point, no Letters to the Editor and a bunch of columnists off the wire, so whatever. I give print newspapers about 3 years, tops.
I’m doing my part by not reading the Times anymore. Sometimes I pick up papers in peoples driveways and throw them away further down the street. I think it’s funny.
Good artist, bad insights.
Yet another sign of the slow, sure death of the Seattle Times ed page. Ed writers are the next to go, then they can go wire-copy-only.
Sad, sad…
Not much of a loss, sorry to say. He was neither insightful or funny as an editorial cartoonist.
@1 Eliminating Times editorials would only embolden the Inheritance Taxers.
Your post is inaccurate. There are 31 *total* departures from the newsroom, 19 voluntary and 12 involuntary.
Oh, and I think it’s our second workforce reduction this year, not our third.
Hope your obsolete print story hasn’t gone to obsolete press yet.
They could make significant cost reductions simply by laying off everyone there who is surnamed Blethen.
@7: Thanks. Fixed that. I do think this is the third round this year, but I will check again and correct if necessary.
The Times still publishes?
Wow, I thought they disappeared along with all the other suburban papers.
Agree with #5. Not funny, not insightful, and, I’d add, not much of an artist…
good riddance devericks! you could follow your mentor and hero david ammons and go work in luke esser’s press office.
you know, it’s a real loss to the people of this city that we don’t get to see your idiotic, pedestrian cartoons about obama’s coattails or the state’s budget, but i’m sure that somehow we’ll find a way to push through without you. or maybe know one will notice (more likely). time will tell!
Lets see. First they endorsed G.W.B.(Puke) for president. Then they endorse Dino Rossi (Gag) for governor. Maybe it’s time to say goodnight, Gracie. Turn the running of the paper over to a new generation and try to keep your hands off. At this point your paper has little to lose.
as Vince said, the Times endorsements are enough to make me wish for their slow painful death.
and then, you got the Hearst’s own Seattle P-I….
I say the Stranger steps it up, hires Devericks, and me, and we become the real Seattle news source.
I mean Daily bitch!
This is the second round of buyouts/layoffs this year and Devericks is only the second person gone from the whole editorial staff. Considering there’s only one daily page to put together and a two-page Sunday edit/oped page, there are still FAR TOO MANY bodies on the editorial staff in proportion to other areas of the paper that readers actually READ.
I used to work there – the majority of the editorial department employees walk around playing pocket-pool all day. Never any heavy lifting there. Each files about one column per week if that.