An interview with Bob Mankoff during the recent Humor on the Slopes ski-and-pen-fest in Colorado's Vail Valley:

Mankoff, now cartoon editor of The New Yorker, goes through about 1,000 cartoons every week, narrowing them down to about 35 before he meets with the editor-in-chief and the managing editor to select the 15 or 16 that get published in the weekly magazine.

Mankoff said he rejects cartoons that are too silly, too raunchy or even too funny for The New Yorker.

"I mean, picture this: You're in the middle of reading a very important article in The New Yorker, and then you're laughing because you got distracted by a cartoon, and you have to go to the bathroom because of all the laughing ... come on people, please keep the humor at a minimum," Mankoff said.
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Mankoff said humor is an immensely important "counter weight" in journalism.

"I think cartoons basically say, 'the world is ambiguous,'" Mankoff said. "They cut down to size all the issues that seem so big."