As a public service, I offer the following scribbly infographic to show how the front-page Westmorland Gazette newspaper cartoon is produced.
Stage 1 - A journalist goes out and gathers a news story
Stage 2 - The journalist types in the news story, adding supplementary facts, figures and typos
Stage 3 - The cartoonist turns up 3 hours before press deadline and consults with his esteemed editor on suitable stories for the week's front-page cartoon
Stage 4 - The cartoonist then goes off to quiet corner to come up with ideas and pretend not to be daydreaming
Stage 5 - The cartoonist offers ideas of unsurpassed brilliance for consideration of the editor
Stage 6 - The steamed editor subjects the cartoonist's ideas to a rigorous editorial selection process
Stage 7 - Once the cartoonist receives the editor's final choice, he embarks upon artwork of great depth and beauty
Stage 8 - The artwork is scanned and beamed through cyberspace to Westmorland Gazette Production Command somewhere in low Earth orbit
Stage 9 - The following morning, The Westmorland Gazette appears with cartoon on front page. Loyal readers search out magnifying glass and prepare to be amused.
Stage 10 - The sketches submitted appear on this blog on Thursday morning and you get to vote which the editor should have chosen. To find out if you were right, the final cartoon appears on my website and you can find it here.
