For years, Lee Publishing, owner of The Arizona Daily Star, has been blocking me from donating my professional life’s work to my hometown Alma mater, the University of Arizona, specifically the University of Arizona Library’s Special Collections Archive.
Now that billionaire investor David Hoffman has acquired a controlling stake in Lee Enterprises, making himself the primary owner of the parent company of the Arizona Daily Star I am hoping he may hear me out.
A Substantial Collection
The collection I intended to donate to my school includes over 10,000 cartoon originals, a large collection of relevant ephemera, my Arizona-related political mementos, and hundreds of relevant correspondences.
A Special Ask From Special Collections
Long before I retired the folks at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library expressed enthusiastic interest in collecting and archiving my original artworks upon my retirement from cartooning. Nice, right?
My collected artworks date back to before 1986 when I started at the Star, back to my years at the Wildcat, my years working as an independent freelance cartoonist, and including my formative years drawing at the Oklahoma City Times, The Virginian Pilot and the Daily Press.
In the University’s state-of-the-art climate controlled archive my art would safely reside next to distinguished items such as the journals of Ed Abbey, Mo Udall’s joke file, artifacts from Governor Raul Castro’s and Governor Rose Mofford’s Administration and the works of other Arizonans of note.
What could be better?
An Honor
I was more honored by their proposal than by any accolade I had ever received in my entire life. Seemed like the perfect answer. It’s a huge collection. My kids don’t want it save for a few select pieces.
The U of A has the room for it.
Lee Publishing Responds
When I told Lee Publishing a back in 2019, seven years ago, I intended to donate my originals to the University of Arizona I assumed they’d be happy for their editorial cartoonist.
I assumed that perhaps Lee, proud of the employee to whom they awarded their respected and singular “Spirit of Lee” award in Chicago years ago, might proudly assist their spirited employee in this endeavor.
Lee’s Lawyers Get Involved
In 2019 Lee’s lawyers decided the University would have to sign a licensing agreement or my donation could never proceed.
A multi-page licensing agreement describing fees the University Library must agree to pay Lee if it ever reproduced any of my originals.
A fee. For a gift given freely. Was the meaning of the word “donation” incomprehensible to Lee? Such gifts are customarily given to such institutions with no strings attached.
The University rejected this financial entanglement.
It’s 2026
It’s 2026, seven years later and I am still prohibited from donating my life’s works to the University of Arizona.
Lee insisted injecting this unheard cash grab into an otherwise common, clean and simple agreement. When I protested I was told this was based on a theoretical issue.
A theoretical issue which has never arisen, nor would ever arise, between any public library and its donor.
The Example Cited
The example cited imagined the Library at the University of Arizona Special Collections hosting a modest gallery show celebrating my work, let’s say, upon my death. Or even a show wherein just one of my cartoon originals relevant to the subject of the show, say Evan Mecham or Mo Udall are displayed.
Say they then create a gallery guide which they sell, featuring an image of the one displayed cartoon original. Lee wants a fee to reproduce that image. For any Fitzsimmons’ image the library might reprint for educational purposes Lee insisted they wanted to charge the library a user’s fee.
Permit Me To Scream
Permit me to scream this truth at the top of my lungs: This is something libraries do not do.
Library gallery shows are free.
Library programs are free.
And my beloved University Library is a public institution. A p-u-b-l-i-c institution.
How Unusual Is This?
When the University declined my donation, thanks to Lee Publishing’s uniquely embarrassing extortion rider, associated with my gift to my Alma mater, I knew how unusual this was.
And “unusual” is an understatement.
America’s largest academic institution dedicated to comics, cartoons, and graphic novels is the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, formerly known as the Cartoon Research Library. It is located on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Not Once, Not Ever
Not once has that esteemed institution ever had a donor’s former publisher or syndicate demand a “licensing agreement” from the museum tied to the cartoonist’s gift of cartoon originals.
The University’s Reaction
The University’s reaction to this unconventional and completely unheard of deal breaker was disappointment and astonishment.
Consider how much it would cost the Library to curate my collection, to invest in the appropriate custom storage essential to protect my works and to pay their staff devoted to the tedious archival preservation of my thousands of donated pieces and to cover the daily cost of preserving my collection for all time in their state of the art climate controlled archives so that cartooning scholars, historians and journalism students would have easy and free access to the body of my work, for all time, one editorial cartoonist’s enduring historical record of this period in our state’s history.
For Years We Went Back And Forth Over This
Today my original works continues to decay, scattered about in our home, our shed and in our open carport. I’m waiting for the film crew from “Hoarders” to show up at our door any day.
I Have Always Understand My Work is Lee’s Intellectual Property
I have always understood and accepted that my published work is the “intellectual property” of my former publisher. This dispute is not about their right to own and publish my scanned and digitalized works.
This is about my thousands of hard copy cartoon originals. Once my drawings were scanned, uploaded and published, both in print and online, I saved and stored every cartoon original I drew since I began working at the Star in 1986.
In my thirty-five years there no one in management ever expressed any interest in archiving these originals. Made sense. Once published they may as well have been litter.
Until now.
Should I Have Been Surprised By Lee’s Response?
I guess I should not have been so naive. I didn’t learn a damned thing from an earlier insult:
When I was offered international syndication, a noteworthy achievement for any cartoonist, Lee rewarded me by garnishing every cent of my fluid income from my syndication, varying roughly from pennies to up to thousands of dollars a year, an act that the owner of the syndicate, Daryl Cagle, informed me was the only one of its kind he’d ever experienced in all his years of representing hundred of cartoonists.
Save For One Exception
Daryl did tell me he knew of only one other cartoonist who was treated similarly: a Chinese cartoonist whose income was confiscated by the Chinese Communist Party.
A Sap
A cheerful sap, I accepted this plantation attitude, happy to have my work seen in up to 700 publications around the world on any given day. I accepted Lee’s garnishment of my syndication income and went on with my life.
Since Retiring From Cartooning
Since retiring from cartooning years ago, Lee has remained free to profit from reprinting the “intellectual property”, the thousands of digitalized images which Lee rightfully possesses, whenever they wish to do so.
No compensation ever came my way from the sales of my works in publications beyond the Editorial Page, such as my cartoon book, my greeting cards, note cards, annual calendars, annual holiday ornaments, beach towels, or window shades.
This I accepted.
When I Persisted in Protesting Lee blocking my donation
When the University understandably declined to accept my work with the poison pill licensing agreement attached I protested to my superiors at Lee.
Their answer?
After years of quibbling, Lee would be willing to box, stack and store my treasured collection in their grim grey warehouse behind the Northwest Costco.
An alternative to donating my work to the University of Arizona’s Special Collections archive that left me flummoxed.
Was That A Joke?
As an honored alum of the University of Arizona, I found this to be senseless and infuriating. Picking pockets for pennies.
A year later when I revisited the topic regarding Lee’s licensing agreement demand, aborting my donation to the University, after progress was promised, it was suggested to me that Lee employs an archivist somewhere in the corporation who would be happy to “archive” my work.
What?
Insulting
This second alternative, offered by my former employer, to whom I gave a lifetime of countless hours, well beyond the job description, was another vague pathetic gesture to pacify me.
Through the tenure of a number of Star editors and publishers I cheerfully served as the face of the paper in our community for decades, as a lecturer, an entertainer, an emcee, an auctioneer, a standup comedian, a caricature artist, an awards banquet master of ceremonies, and God knows what else, at every venue, every community center, every high school, middle school, junior college, university, music hall, theater, auditorium, VFW post, church and civic club west of the San Pedro that invited me to cheer them on.
During my tenure of nearly four decades I raised hundreds of thousands of dollars working fundraisers for everything from AIDS victims to Breast Cancer Research to Immigrant Causes to Step Up to Justice to Doctors Without Borders, including illustrating cookbooks for the Food Bank to creating promotional art for hundreds of other charitable concerns, giving my Arizona Daily Star the best face I could, seven days a week, for the breadth of my entire public career.
You can see why I was broadsided by their surprising answer to my request to simply donate my originals and associated materials to my hometown school.
Included among my donations would be the numerous state press awards I won for the Star. My two original cartoons that were displayed in an exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum. My cartoon autographed by the five Capitol Hill Police who defended the Capitol on January 6th. My signed note from Gabby. Entertaining hate mail. Defaced cartoons by creative “haters”. Political mementos. My first cartoon published in the Star on my first day. A letter from Mo Udall. And much more.
After Years of Lee Stalling
After years of fruitless exchanges I am done asking Lee, a six hundred million dollar corporation, to jettison their pathetic “pick pocket” licensing agreement allowing me, their longtime loyal employee, to do the right thing. To finally donate my life’s works to my University, .
And so I am taking this public.
After seven years of this maddening quibbling, one way or another I will donate my works to Special Collections.
Without a petty licensing agreement.
What’s Next?
I assume Lee may even sue me to block me from achieving my life’s dream.
I envision myself having no choice but to invite the local alternative print and digital press and our local TV reporters to be at the Special Collections Library to witness Lee’s lawyers attempting to block me, a 70-year old man with Coronary Microvascular Disease, with limited time left in this world, from wheeling carts stacked high with my life’s work into the archive where my works belong.
Will the Poynter Nonprofit Media Institute, the Columbia School of Journalism and every other revered journalism-related outlet cover this ridiculous David and Goliath story about their insulting mistreatment of their award winning creator in his silver years?
If My Dream Is Deferred
If Lee persists, I will have no choice but to pursue a final action.
I will burn my entire collection of works and ephemera in one final blazing public protest. Come to my home. Stop me.
I’ve had years to think about this. I have concluded this is my answer if my humble rational reasonable request is not respected. Better a bonfire of all of my work than leaving it to pack rats. Would anyone blame me for dumping the ashes in front of my once beloved Arizona Daily Star office?
I remain grateful for the shot at an amazing life The Arizona Daily Star gave me. Yet today I am left feeling betrayed and profoundly wounded.
I Love The University of Arizona
It’s my hometown school.
It is the school where this Columbia Journalism School Picture Editor of the Year Award winner was inducted into the Arizona Daily Wildcat Hall of Fame in 2003.
It is where this John Fischetti Award Winner was recently honored with induction into the University of Arizona’s Journalism School Hall of Fame.
It is the school where I was honored to give a keynote speech at one of the earliest Tucson Festival of Books banquets welcoming over a hundred distinguished authors to our community.
It is the school where this creator, producer and writer of the “Annual Arroyo Cafe Holiday Radio Show”, and the Diaper Bank’s “Twisted Christmas Carol” shows at the Fox, first learned to hustle, to work hard, to serve my community, to overcome obstacles and to bear down.
And it is where this former President of the Tucson Press Club will one day add his works to the University of Arizona Special Collections Library.
Because Lee knows it would be the right thing to do.
They know where to reach me.
Please do not cancel your Star subscription in protest. This is not about my colleagues still working to bring you the best community journalism in the west. Still working to bring you the truth in these troubled times. Support them. I do.
There are no words for what you have written. I could feel every bit of your frustration. Please don't do a Ted DeGrazia sequel with your amazing work. There has be a solution.