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A couple of years ago we were crowing with joy when Pulitzer Prize finalist cartoonist Matt Bors was hired to run Medium’s comics section, The Nib, and the results were glorious, with two years of daily content that was smart funny, trenchant, moving, eye opening and everything else we love about comics.
But, as a thoroughly modern cartoonist, Bors bounced back in mere days with….a Kickstarter! East More Comics! will be a massive 300 page compendium of the best of The Nib, with work by
Gemma Correll · Rich Stevens · Zach Weinersmith · Jon Rosenberg · Emily Flake · KC Green, Tom Tomorrow · Matt Bors · Jen Sorensen · Matt Lubchansky · Ann Telnaes · Brian McFadden · Liza Donnelly· Ruben Bolling · Ted Rall · Keith Knight, Andy Warner · Josh Neufeld · Susie Cagle · Emi Gennis · Ryan Alexander-Tanner · Eleri Harris · Erik Thurman · Jess Ruliffson · Sophie Yanow · Roxanne Palmer, Ron Wimberly · Erika Moen · Sarah Glidden · Wendy Macnaughton · Mike Dawson · Lucy Bellwood · Whit Taylor · Lisa Eisenberg · Eroyn Franklin · JJ McCullough, Kate Leth · James Sturm · Shannon Wheeler · Scott Bateman · Eleanor Davis · Maki Naro · John Leavitt · Kendra Wells
WHOA, maybe THIS is the new Kramers Ergot?
In his farewell on Medium, Bors announced that The Nib was coming with him and he hopes to announce a new plan with a publisher soon. So far from being the end of something cool, it’s just the beginning. The campaign is about half funded a week in but if they get to $60k, all the cartoonists get paid more. Make it so, people.
0 Comments on Cartoonist leaves paying gig, starts Kickstarter for The Nib as of 7/21/2015 4:38:00 PM
As reported last week, The Nib, the political comics site edited by Matt Bors and run by Medium, is undergoing some changes, and on Friday, Bors explained what’s what. Basically, the site is moving away from daily publishing—and won’t be running weekly comic strips any more—but will continue to publish editorial, satirical and journalistic pieces.
We will no longer be running certain work on certain days or with the same regularity. It’s a departure from what we’ve been doing, for sure, but I came here to experiment with publishing. You’ll see more of it in the coming weeks: response driven features, a new collective I’m building, and anything else I can think of to create interesting comics.
Here’s what isn’t changing: The Nib is always going to be a place for the sharp political cartoons, great journalism and essays that other media outlets are too uninventive or shortsighted to be commissioning themselves.
It will always be that.
In his time at The Nib, Bors has proven himself an exemplary editor, and given a platform to some powerful voices, so I have no doubt that as long as he’s running the ship, the Nib will remain a vibrant site. The once daily Nib newsletter will now go out once a week and spotlight other work by Nib contributors, among other chagnes. In his Friday post, Bors also mentioned a future Kickstarter to collect some of the work from the site—he successfully Kickstarted a book of his Pulitzer Prize finalist comics back in 2012.
With all this talk of change, I wondered what was going on with Darling Sleeper, the indie comics site edited by Jesse Lucas, but it updated today so it seems to be carrying on as before.
Medium was launched as a site for “long form content” by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams two years ago, and like many start-ups is still looking for a revenue source, In december Williams was interviewed by USA Today and talked about the need to clarify what they were doing:
The 75-person start-up started by Williams and his Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, is used by up to 17 million people a month, including President Obama and Elon Musk. It has become an impressive forum for essays on tech and design, book chapters – even poetry.
“It’s easy to jump in and publish something aesthetically pleasing,” says Natalie Bartlett, community and content lead at Rough Draft Ventures in New York. For the past year, she has posted items of entrepreneurs on Medium.
Yet the 2-year-old writing platform is a work in progress amid so many content outlets online, summarily characterized by some as another vanity project by a tech exec dabbling in journalism (see Pierre Omidyar, First Look Media; and Chris Hughes, The New Republic).
The Nib is the best comics site out there, with new comics every day from some of the greatest cartoonists working. Edited by Matt Bors, it’s a model of how a comics site can be sharply observent and politically relevant, and yet still be good comics overal, with both editorial cartoons—Tis Modern World, Tom the Dancing Bug, Slowpoke, Bors own strip—and new work by folks like Emily Flake, Lisa Hanawalt, R Stevens, Ted Rall, Brian McFadden, Erika Moen, Shannon Wheeler and more more more. A whole generation of incisive non-fiction cartoonists, given a paying platform to work for.
Unfortunately, it’s not going to be around in the same form any more.
The Nib is part of Medium, a start up that is devoted to “long form reads.” Like many start ups, it doesn’t have any visible means of making money, so while the site employed Bors and paid cartoonists to create new work, as I all too presciently suggested, that model was too radical to work forever.
I should note that I have no idea what the changes will be. Assistant editor Eleri Mai Harris was let go a few weeks ago, the first warning sign, and now the cartoonists who were syndicated on the site, such as Tom Tomorrow and Ruben Bolling, as indicating they they will not appear there any more. Bolling wrote:
Hey, Tom the Dancing Bug ran regularly on Medium.com’s comic site, The Nib, for about a year and a half, but I’m told that due to changes at Medium, The Nib will be reinventing itself, and will not carry comics on regular basis anymore.
I’ve been tremendously impressed with Nib founder/owner Matt Bors and the way he built the site up. I’d known him as a young, very talented editorial cartoonist, and a friend, but once he grabbed the reins of The Nib he proved himself to be an endlessly energetic, brilliantly innovative editor and comics impresario. He developed a large, flexible roster of cartoonists and ran fascinating journalism comics, hilarious and fresh humor comics, heart-wrenching autobiographical comics, and on a moment’s notice he would figure out a way to round up local cartoonists to comment on international stories. He also did all this with great organization, professionalism, integrity and respect for the artists he gathered.
My comic played a small part in Matt’s grand webcomics project, but I was proud to be associated with it.
The Nib is not going away, and I’ll be watching (and maybe even participating in small ways) how Matt reinvents it, quite possibly in ways that even better lend themselves to his unique editorial talents and vision.
Just as a reminder, here are the most recent comics to appear on the site, a look at the meat industry by Mike Dawson, Longstreet Farm, that will make you uncomfortable
And Eleanor Davis’s The Highgate County Fancy Chicken Show, which, like most of her work, is a multi leveled indictment of stereotypes, fat shaming and other shade we throw at people for no reason whatsoever.
These are good comics, and The Nib was full of them.
I’ve reached out to Bors for further information, but I do know that The Nib will be continuing, so let’s not write an obituary just yet. But everytime i clicked on the site, I thought “This is too good to last” and sadly…I was right.
Here’s a selection of twitter outrage over the change — even CNN’s Jake Tapper got in on the action.
@tomtomorrow@MattBors@thenib I loved the selection and destination. I now will be clicking on many sites instead of one.
This is depressing and frustrating, and another example of why I’ve been reluctant to catalog webcomics for our library’s catalog. Free content I’d gotten cataloged had gone over to Comixology, and now our links are dead. And sites like The Nib, which I’d gotten cataloged to make it easier for my patrons to discover, are now no longer what we described:
Alert the media! Everyone was excited last year when Award-winning cartoonist Matt Bors got hired by the Medium to edit an actual comics page, The Nib, the cartooning world stood up and cheered at an editorial cartoonsits getting a paying job. And not he’s turned around and hired another cartoonist! Tasmanian transplant Eleri Mai Harris has just been hired as Associate Editor for The Nib and will help with finding contributors, editing comics as well as penning her her comics.
The Beat first met Harris at Career Day at CCS, where was was studying, and were immediately impressed by her background—print journalism—and how she had applied it to comics. Journalistic comics are a growing field, and it’s the smart people like Bors and HArris who are making it happen.
I love The Beat, but the editing has become completely non-existent.
-”cartoonsits”
-”her her comics”
-”where was was studying”
-”HArris”
Shelly said, on 6/17/2014 2:42:00 PM
Based on the headline, raise your hand if you thought Cartoonist A had outsourced his job to Cartoonist B for fractions of a penny on the dollar?
.
Wes said, on 6/17/2014 5:47:00 PM
Spelling and grammatical errors galore and the title is really misleading. H
Wes said, on 6/17/2014 5:48:00 PM
^ ohhh, the irony.
bryan said, on 6/17/2014 9:29:00 PM
I Think its cool thAt kidz are getting a change to right artickles for people these artickles dont not right them selfs;
R.R. Werner said, on 6/18/2014 10:02:00 AM
“Based on the headline, raise your hand if you thought Cartoonist A had outsourced his job to Cartoonist B for fractions of a penny on the dollar?”
Hand-raised!
And I was all ready to make a “But I thought Bob Kane wad dead?” joke too. :)
bryan said, on 6/18/2014 11:12:00 AM
Me again. I couldn’t let this article go… I clicked on Heidi’s name to see what else she’d written, and didn’t have to look far before seeing other similar evidence of a total lack of English syntax or prosaic finesse.
Exhibit A: “Just one more little bad news for Denver Comic Con…”
Exhibit B: “…Barsotti has passed away at age 80. He was 80.”
Exhibit C: “Heidi is happy to let you pick her brains for wisdom … whatever you think Heidi’s brains were worth!”
Uh-oh… Cumbersome grammar. Simple sentences. Mixed verb tenses!? I started thinking my derisive sarcasm was being heaped upon the head of some person who didn’t deserve it. Maybe she was, in fact, someone who was being given a shot at contributing to this publication apart from any writing merit. I’m all for giving people opportunities.
Then, I saw that she is the Editor-in-Chief. She is driving this ship. I don’t expect anyone at the Beat to care that they’ve lost my readership (I’d only just found the site and subscribed via Feedly)—I’m probably just another condescending jerk-wad who doesn’t care about anyone or anything—but I do. And that’s why I’m taking the time to write this. I like to challenge myself and others to set high standards—especially when the thing one doing is something associated with strong feelings, dare I say “passion.”
The robustness of this site is definitely evidence that there is a lot of support and passion for comics. I applaud this. But, at the very least, Heidi—set an example for your staff (or follow their examples) by holding yourself to a high standard: utilize spell checking tools, grammar tools, ask someone to proofread.
Sorry to be such a wet blanket—just because you like what you’re doing doesn’t mean you’re naturally good at it. Signing off.
bryan said, on 6/18/2014 11:15:00 AM
EDIT—taking my own medicine:
“…especially when the thing one [IS] doing is something associated with strong feelings…”
Didn’t proofread that properly.
Political cartoonist and writer Matt Bors hopes to raise $20,000 on Kickstarter for his anthology, Life Begins at Incorporation: Cartoons and Essays by Matt Bors.
Bors, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, has created a 225 page-book with cartoons and human essays that profile all the crazy things about America from the year 2012. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think?
Here’s more about the project: “I’ve been drawing political cartoons every week since we stupidly invaded Iraq in 2003. Since then, my work has appeared in papers all across the country and been shared all over the web. I even picked up some prizes this year, like the Herblock. But I’ve never done a collection of my work … Editorial cartoonists are going through tough times with the collapse of old media and paying outlets – yet more people read them than ever before because of the web. I know people still value political satire and that’s what I want to prove with this book.”
Yesterday on CBC’s “Q” Jian Ghomeshi interviewed both Terry Mosher and Matt Bors regarding the state of editorial cartooning. Trying to embed the CBC’s audio player is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree, so rather than embedding only that segment, I was only able to add the entire 75-minute show. Just forward to the 4:00 mark and you can listen the 20-minute segment on cartooning.
0 Comments on Yesterday on CBC’s “Q” Jian Ghomeshi... as of 1/1/1900
Matt Bors is my favourite editorial cartoonist. He is one of few in his field whose work redefines what an editorial cartoon looks like. Often in comic strip form, you will find none of the traditional labeled (and laboured) metaphors that you might find in other cartoonists’ work.
As a fan of cartooning as an art form, what I appreciate most about Matt is his critical eye and vocalness about the state of editorial cartooning. In the same way that Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show lampoons and takes a critical look at news media, exposing its shortcomings, so Matt does with editorial cartooning via his blog.
Matt warns us with a Crying Turd Alert when an editorial cartoonist phones in an obituary cartoon by drawing a fill-in-the-blank shedding a single tear. Then there’s the Excessive Labeling Award to cartoonists whose work is plagued with labels on every figure or element in the cartoon. And Matt’s not shy to call someone out on the lazy choice to use Photoshop in lieu of an actual drawing.
When Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays died back in June, Matt whipped up a parody of the tired and lazy celebrity-at-the-pearly-gates trope, which turned out to be a sad premonition of things to come.
And today on his blog, Matt reposted a cartoon from last year to warn us of what we might expect from other cartoonists come Halloween:
Here’s an interview with Matt, conducted by Daryl Cagle at this year’s American Association of Editorial Cartoonists Convention:
You can subscribe to Matt’s blog where he posts his cartoons, but you can also subscribe via Comics.com. The latter requires user registration to access the RSS feed, but the feed images are larger than on Matt’s blog, and you can add any of the other comic strips and editorial cartoons from the site as well. Finally, Matt is also on Twitter as @mattbors.
This is depressing and frustrating, and another example of why I’ve been reluctant to catalog webcomics for our library’s catalog. Free content I’d gotten cataloged had gone over to Comixology, and now our links are dead. And sites like The Nib, which I’d gotten cataloged to make it easier for my patrons to discover, are now no longer what we described:
http://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/10906030