Is cartooning going downhill in the US?

What’s up with cartooning in the US these days? Cartoonists are putting captions on old-timey public domain art, drawing stick figures, and doing stuff with computers instead of learning how to draw. Sometimes they don’t even bother to master their computer art programs. And the venues for their work are disappearing: newspapers are going under, those free entertainment guides at the coffeeshop are buying fewer comics or none at all, and that manga crap is taking over the “graphic novel” shelf space at the bookstore. Lots of self-published stuff online, some of it good, but while putting cartoons online may be easier than publishing a ‘zine was back in the day, it’s also that much harder to get ahead of the pack.