Once upon a time, newspaper editorial cartoonists in the United States were treated like kings. The best gave their newspapers national prestige, helped boost circulations, and were fought after with big money and other perks as vigorously as any top sports star is today. Their cartoons were editorial daggers that killed the careers of many a politician, skewered the juggler of many a businessman or bureaucrat, or carefully carved public sentiment in ways editorial prose just could not.

Oh, how times have changed.

Today, as newspapers struggle to cope with their Internet competition by cutting staffs to the bone and looking for every way possible to cut costs, the salaried newspaper editorial cartoonist has suddenly become expendable. Even some of the best have been shown the door in recent years, and the ever-dwindling number of survivors are banding together, circling their wagons, and hoping against hope that the cavalry will charge in from the distance and save them.

Recently, on a cartoonist-heavy message board, someone posed the question (to no one in particular): How many editorial cartoonists will still be around in five years?  My first thought was instantly something like, “One – and he or she will be syndicated like crazy.”

Then I drew the cartoon below, which I’ve titled: State of newspaper editorial cartooning in five years?

I hope I’m wrong.