Cartoonists Get the Picture
The other two putative finalists were Nick Anderson of Louisville’s Courier-Journal and Jack Ohman of Portland’s Oregonian. (Syndicated cartoonist Doug Marlette is another name that comes up.) Like Luckovich, both say they’re not in touch with Dold. “I’ve just kind of moved on with my life,” says Ohman. “I E-mailed him I think it was last October, and he E-mailed me back saying this is the situation–they’re in very severe budget constraints and no decisions have been made. I have to take that at face value. It’s kind of existential. At some point it’s either going to happen or not.”
Anderson says he pitched himself to Dold as someone who’d live in Chicago and tackle Chicago issues. “I almost always get a reaction from local cartoons,” Anderson says. And Scott Stantis, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, says, “No one gives a rip what the Chicago Tribune says about bin Laden. But they will care mightily about the new expansion of O’Hare Field or Millennium Park.”
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As president of the AAEC, Stantis composed an unprecedented letter the other day. He wrote the publisher of the Buffalo News to protest the paper’s decision not to replace Tom Toles.
The Pay’s the Thing
Weiss, as careful a conversationalist as she is a writer, told me the story of Burnett and her daughter was by then an oft-told tale. She added, “My instincts are not a gossip columnist’s instincts. Unless I’m doing a really in-depth story and I have time to get to know the person and the person time to get to know me, there’s something unseemly about it.”
