Please Read! Support My Computer Fundraiser

Regular readers of this blog are well aware of the meltdown in print media and the collapse of the economic support for cartooning. The Herblock Foundation recently issued a white paper about the crisis of American editorial cartooning, to which I contributed one of several essays that explain the situation in detail. Columbia Journalism Review did another piece that explains how editorial cartooning has been reduced to hobby status. (Irony alert! Shortly after this piece appeared, I lost my gig cartooning for CJR.)

In 2000 my cartoons appeared in TIME, Fortune, Silicon Alley Reporter and Bloomberg magazines, along with some 140 newspapers. It was a nice living, and I had no complaints. Now I’m in no magazine whatsoever, in but a fraction of the newspapers I was in, and those papers pay less than 25% each of what they paid then. Double irony alert! I have never been as widely read as a cartoonist, but my income has been reduced to where I was in the early 1990s, when I was just starting out.

My situation is typical. Now that print media is no longer willing or able to pay salaries or even modest reprint fees to cartoonists, the only way cartooning can continue as an actual job is if cartoon fans support it directly.

Is this feasible? I don’t know. Certainly fans of gamer comics have provided more than adequate support for the cartoonists who draw about role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragon to make a living. In one breathtaking example that has the political cartooning community shaking its collective head, an unknown, novice gamer cartoonist whose work appears primitive to outside eyes just raised $1.2 million on Kickstarter to reprint a book–in other words, to do no work whatsoever.

Why did this cartoonist do so well? His readers care about gaming and they’re willing to support the artists who document their scene. The question for fans of my work now is—and I thought I would never ask this—do you care enough about what I do to help support it?

Unless I figure out some way to replace the catastrophic loss of income I have lost to the censorship I have suffered since 9/11 by the right as well as pseudo-liberal outlets like Mother Jones and The Nation, which have moved to the right as well, as well as the general print media downturn, I am going to have to find other work. And I don’t mean in 10 years. I mean soon.

Of course there will always be amateur and hobbyist cartoonists. But I don’t have the time to draw for free. I need to earn money to pay bills.

We have already lost great cartoonists like Lloyd Dangle, David Rees and Mikhaela Reid to the cartoon industry collapse. Most others are teetering on the edge of disaster. I am one of the latter.

Some of the ways I reach out directly to readers are through the Ted Rall Subscription Service, auctioning off the right to select my ideas, and even auctioning off dinner and drinks with me.

I recently asked you to consider supporting my computer fundraiser. Like other cartoonists, I need a laptop to take on the road and a desktop computer for home.

I’m halfway there! Thanks to everyone who contributed, my modest but beautiful 15-inch MacBookPro just arrived:

If you’d like to kick in toward the desktop computer–I’d like to get an iMac–here’s what I’m offering in exchange for contributions:

$50 – rough sketch/drawing

$200 – original syndicated editorial cartoon

$500 – three original syndicated editorial cartoons

$2000 – five original syndicated editorial cartoons plus an original cartoon just for you, drawn to your specifications, about anything you want (you can choose the dialogue and everything)

To contribute simply click below:

And thanks!!! It’s been a nice run, and I’m very grateful whatever happens.