Cartoonist Steve Greenberg — who recently took an Honorable Mention prize at the AltWeekly Awards — writes about the highs (being able to say “shit” in a cartoon) and lows (feeling like a “dinosaur”) of contributing to an alt-weekly after years of working for daily newspapers.

Greenberg lost his staff position at daily Ventura County Star in 2008, only to be promptly picked up by Ventura County Reporter, where his work currently appears. He’s noticed that the Reporter focuses more on the economically disadvantaged, which is something he can relate to as a cartoonist:

For one thing, identifying with the laid-off or those whose jobless benefits are threatened is a piece of cake these days, and my own situation has made me a bit angrier about this issue — and anger is always good fuel for editorial cartooning.

But one of the biggest challenges Greenberg cites is a generation gap, the fact that as a Baby Boomer, it’s not as easy for him to find visual metaphors and pop-culture references that will resonate with the current generation of alt-weekly readers.