End of the World As We Knew It: Jack Ohman on State of the Art
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Award winning editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman (Sigma Delta Chi, RFK Humanitarian, Thomas Nast, National Headliner, Scripps Howard, and on and on, including The Pulitzer when it meant something) and former president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and a fly fisherman has been a political cartoonist for nearly 50 years. Jack has seen the changes over that time and speaks of the current climate facing editoonists.
I have just returned from the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention outside of Washington, DC.. I am a former two-time president of AAEC.
When I first started going in 1987, there were about 200 cartoonists attending. We held our meeting at the National Press Club. Mario Cuomo was our luncheon speaker. We were feted in the Rose Garden by a genial Republican president. Imagine that.
Last week 40 attended, and we were in a small room in a suburban Maryland convention center.
We did have electricity.
The internet was shaky.
All of the attendees were all hail and well-met, and we made the best of it. We always do, or mostly. We love what we do and we work hard to keep doing it. I’ve been doing this for 47 years, and sometimes I wish I had just transitioned over to working in a fly shop a few years ago.
Then my fly shop closed. Seriously.
Read the transcript of the speech at Jack Ohman’s You Betcha! Substack.
A reminder to support your favorite cartoonist:
California alone used to have about a dozen full-time editorial cartoonists employed on daily newspapers. You may have heard of some of them: Conrad, Babin, Breen, Meyer, Frank, yours truly, and many other very talented folks.
Now there are none.
I am affiliated as a contributing columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, where I write one column per week and one cartoon for Sunday. I note that they are very supportive of the tensile strength I bring to their newspaper, and are extremely encouraging. I do one cartoon per week for Michael Smerconish. I draw three for Tribune Content Agency per week. I also have a Substack called You Betcha!, which I will mercilessly beg you for support.
Substack is sixty percent of my income.
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