Editorial cartooningLegalNewspaper industryOriginal Art
Lee Enterprises Nixes David Fitzsimmons Donation
Skip to commentsPublished: July 18, <a href="https://comicvibe.com/pictures-from-beachside-comic-con-2026-in-cleethorpes/” title=”Pictures from Beachside Comic Con 2026 in Cleethorpes”>2026Updated: July 19, 20261 minute4 comments
For reasons unexplained (greed?) Lee Enterprises is insisting on unheard of compensation from any library that will accept David Fitzsimmons’ editorial cartoons archive.
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.
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?
But there was an unforeseen and unprecedented problem.
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.
Lee Enterprises is willing put Fitz’s life work of originals in their storage for safe keeping and and their use. Fitz would rather burn his files.
It is an outrageous situation how Lee is treating a man who has given them decades of service.
Read Fitz’s full Substack post for many more, legal and otherwise, details.
At the moment Fitz is hanging his hopes on David Hoffman, the new billionaire investor who has acquired a majority stake in Lee Enterprises.
images by and © David Fitzsimmons
