Ripped from the sketchbook!

At the convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists last week, a panel on social media agreed on little other than that it's important to post something every day. Since I don't have a cartoon to post today, here's a pencil drawing from my sketchbook of House Speaker John Boehner.

The AAEC panel on social media strove for diversity. There was Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press advocating that we cartoonists direct traffic from our Facebook page and such to our newspaper's site so that the newspaper knows how many eyeballs our cartoons bring them. Opposite Clay was Ted Rall, telling us to steer those eyeballs to our personal sites because our newspapers are going to screw us sooner or later.

Then there was Stephanie McMillan, detailing how we should each be posting daily messages on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, MySpace, Google+, iChat, iChef, ManHunt, Emily's Listserve, and Farmville; blogging on WordPress; and keeping on top of all the on-line comments. Countering Staphanie was -- and I'm not sure I got the name right -- Bruce MacKinnon of the Halifax Herald. Bruce just wants to draw, so his wife takes care of all the technical computer stuff. She participated in the panel via Skype, and was left lingering up on the projection screen after the panel broke up and everyone else was milling around the room. (Eventually, she decided that nobody was going to come up and chat with her, and she hung up. How many convention/reunion attendees' spouses have wished they could do that?)