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Cathy Wilcox Leaves The Sydney Morning Herald After 37 Years

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Cathy Wilcox leaves The Sydney Morning Herald after 37 years — Australian cartoonist Cathy Wilcox is leaving The Sydney Morning Herald after 37 years.

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Australian editorial cartoonist Cathy Wilcox is leaving The Sydney Morning Herald after 37 years, as Nine’s publishing division undergoes a broader newsroom restructure.

Wilcox, 63, applied for voluntary redundancy in recent weeks and her application was accepted, according to The Australian. She could leave the newspaper as early as this week.

Her departure comes as Nine Newspapers restructures its newsrooms, with about 30 positions understood to have been made redundant. The changes are part of the publisher’s continuing shift towards a digital-first model.

Wilcox began working as a cartoonist for The Sydney Morning Herald in 1989. Her cartoons have also appeared in The Age, where her work has been published since 1993.

Over the course of her career, Wilcox has won four Walkley Awards. She is president of the Australian Cartoonists Association and was named Political Cartoonist of the Year by the Museum of Australian Democracy in 2009, 2016 and 2020.

Her departure comes several months after a controversy involving one of her editorial cartoons.

On January 7, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age published Wilcox’s cartoon “Grass roots,” addressing calls for a royal commission into antisemitism. In June, the Australian Press Council found that publication of the cartoon breached its Standards of Practice.

The Council concluded that imagery in the cartoon encoded an antisemitic trope and that the newspapers had failed to take reasonable steps to avoid causing or contributing materially to substantial offence, distress or prejudice. The newspapers had earlier published an editorial apologising for the hurt caused by the cartoon.

There is no confirmed evidence that the controversy or the subsequent Press Council ruling caused Wilcox’s departure. The reported basis for her exit is her application for voluntary redundancy during Nine’s wider newsroom restructure.

Wilcox had not publicly commented on her departure at the time of publication.