Lack of media diversity is strangling satire: today's papers are starved for conservative cartoonists.

It was 1996, and as I watched from the floor of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Vice President Al Gore served us cartoonists a big, fat pitch right down the middle of the plate.

Speaking in his primetime Wednesday spot, Gore hushed the crowd with a dramatic and personal account of how his sister's fatal 1984 bout with lung cancer had steeled him to fight the evils of Big Tobacco from that moment forward.

What chutzpah, I thought! Surely the former senator from tobacco-rich Tennessee, the same senator who had lobbied for Big Tobacco and grown the stuff on his own family farm, didn't think he could get away with such a fraudulent piece of self-puffery.

This was the same senator, who--a full four years after his sister's death--had bragged to farmers on the campaign trail: "Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I've hoed it. I've chopped it. I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it"

Once the assembled reporters and pundits had finished slicing and dicing the speech, I thought, I would have my cartoon for the night.

But to my astonishment, every television journalist in the hall missed the story. Every anchor thrilled at the vice president's brave testimonial against Big Tobacco. Every pundit reveled in Gore's oratory.

Robbed of my cartoon--you can't have a punch line without a story--I put down my brush, picked up my reporter's cap, negotiated the maze of media cubicles, and found The Weekly Standard, the only "alternative" media outlet publishing from the convention. I gave them the story, they ran it the next morning in their daily convention newsletter, and even as major newspapers hit the newsstands echoing the networks' praise for Gore, the Standards belated story sent a buzz through the convention. Eventually, of course, the story became Gore legend, even if we cartoonists were denied its immediate fruits in Chicago.

It shouldn't have been that way. The missed Gore story is only Exhibit A in how the lack of political diversity in U.S. journalism is robbing readers of good journalism--and ultimately good satire. Whether with partisan coverage of the news, or plain intolerance of diverse ideas, today's newspapers are starving good conservative, satirical talent.

The 1,500-plus journalists in Chicago that night were overwhelmingly Democratic-ninety percent of them, according to polls. Lacking perspective, the single-minded pack missed a good tale and deprived all cartoonists--but particularly those with conservative tools--of great material.

Since then, the situation has improved somewhat. Had media outlets like Fox News and Internet blogs been around in 1996, it is unlikely that Gore's hypocrisy would have gone uncovered--and un-cartooned--that Chicago night.

Fast forward to the 2004 campaign's Swift Boat story. By any proper journalistic standard, criticism by decorated veterans of Kerry's central campaign theme, his Vietnam service, was news. Yet the traditional big media either ignored the story or, in the case of the influential New York Times, actually crafted complex charts designed to prove the vets were part of a vast right-wing conspiracy!

Incredibly, one Times managing editor told an interviewer: "If it weren't for cable news, we probably wouldn't have covered the story at all."

Fortunately for conservative satirists, alternate media outlets ran the story, giving us the context necessary to pen our punch lines. Love 'em or hate 'em, these cartoons added spice to a story that has become one of the blockbusters of the political season.

If only conservative cartoonists were so lucky in winning award recognition. The same lack of political diversity is also robbing some of America's finest cartoonists of the recognition they deserve.

Today's stable of political cartoonists is the finest in the nation's history. They are excellent graphic artists, they are talented wordsmiths, and yes, they are mostly liberal. A strong contingent of conservatives exists nonetheless. But when it comes to recognition, only the lefties receive their due.

For the past ten years, not a single conservative cartoonist has been honored with the industry's top award, the Pulitzer Prize.

Wayne Stayskal, Glenn McCoy, Sean Delonas, Bob Gorrell, John Trever, Gary Varvel, and others are every bit as talented as their award-winning, left-wing peers. Yet they are snubbed come contest time. In an era when these fine satirists are a minority in a majority liberal culture, it is arguably they who need the awards more than anyone for self-protection.

As newsroom demographics have come to resemble the Democratic Party, newspapers have begun to behave like it as well. Leftwing activist groups do not brook dissent, and when conservative satirists stray from the politically correct path, they are often met with disapproval.

Awards can help immunize cartoonists from the most vicious attacks. Newspapers will often take the easy route of censoring a cartoonist rather than risk the bad publicity of protesters at their front door. For an industry that seeks to compete for diverse readers against talk radio and cable news, neutering a competitive advantage like conservative satire is a risky bet.

After forty years of Great Society institutions, liberalism is the new entrenched establishment. As a result, conservative satirists often draw today's most cutting-edge--and necessarily provocative--cartoons. In the long run, their diversity of opinion will make newspaper content stronger. And in the short term, the industry's recognition of the conservatives in its midst will not only expose their work to the broader audience that newspapers need to survive, but will be a valuable shield for these artists when the forces of intolerance rear their ugly head.

Henry Payne is an editorial cartoonist for The Detroit News. His work is distributed by United Features Syndicated. E-mail [e-mail]