There are so many reasons why newspaper cartoonists are seemingly shying away from online publishing though (If you assume that they are…).
Without wanting to offend anyone, age probably has something to do with it. That plus the fact that the likes of Bell, Brown, Rowson, Garland and Brookes frankly don’t need bigger audiences than they already have through their newspapers. Young cartoonists trying to make a name for themselves should use the web for all it’s worth, but with the more established ones, the work is spread across the web anyway.

Contrary to for example America, where most cartoonists are syndicated, there is a well kept tradition in British cartooning for the cartoonists to be associated mainly with one or two papers. That probably explains to a degree why so few feel it’s necessary to push their work anywhere else once they’ve achieved that association.

What Conrad says about not all cartoons being published online is obviously true.
This has nothing to do with the cartoonists themselves though. It’s more to do with the speed (or lack of it) it has taken for newspapers to come to terms with the fact that the online section needs to be a quality product in its own right.

The breaking of copyright laws by the way, when cartoons are uploaded by others onto image sharing services and blogs, is generally not an issue, as long as correct credit is given to cartoonist and newspaper. (The newspaper often holds something like 50% of the re-publication rights.)
The problems start when they’re used in commercial publications (like Zoo!) or, as we saw a few weeks ago with a cartoon Iain Dale used, when someone took elements of another cartoonist’s work and passed it off as his own.

So, anyway, I think you’re right to a degree. But I think even those of us associated with national newspapers are slowly catching up…
Within the next year or two the lines between viral and ‘traditional’ cartooning will probably have all but disappeared.

…or maybe I talk bollocks.
I think I should be told…